I’m good at liking things. Whether it’s art, people, food, places, books, movies—when I enjoy something, I enjoy it intensely. When eating a good meal, I appear so emotionally affected that my wife sometimes confuses my expression for sorrow. My wife once said to me, after watching me react to hearing a Fiona Apple song for the first time, “I wish everyone could enjoy something as much as you’re enjoying this right now.”
But I believe they can.
Enjoyment is a skill that anyone can improve. I learned it out of necessity. My childhood was unpleasant, and as a coping mechanism, I tried to love, hard, the moments of beauty and pleasure and focus. But everyone could benefit from honing the skill of enjoyment, especially because the world has gotten a little harder to enjoy. Things are generally getting blander—and also multiplying at the speed of light, all vying for your attention.
So how do you learn to enjoy things more?
The only tip people typically receive is to just pay attention, which is unhelpfully unspecific. In my experience, high-level enjoyment, like a sport, is composed of many interlocking micro-skills that must be trained individually, but that reinforce each other. Below, I’ve tried to compile a list of the micro-skills that are most familiar to me.
Look at the Other Part
Move your attention beyond the part of a thing that first grabs you. A good broth or perfume will have layers beyond the one that is loudest, and teasing them apart is gratifying. But this works especially with music—so many songs feature spectacular bass parts that you might not notice if you’re focusing on the attention-hogging lead vocal. It also works with people you’re talking to. Ask yourself: What is fetching about their outfit, or pronunciation? And it works when you’re watching theater: What about the actors who are not talking?