Going for the Gusto--A Little Lesson in Pleasure

I liked that movie! He likes a good brat and a beer on a hot summer day! She likes getting packages in the mail. Do you like scrambled eggs and bacon? Like. Like. Like. Have you ever thought about the idea of “liking” something?  I mean, if I like tacos (which I do…very much), it does not matter to the taco. It does not change the taco one bit and the taco, other than becoming non-existent (because I ate it), cannot care about or experience my preferences. 

But, you know, there is “subject, verb, object” in English. (Be patient with me as I dive into a little bit of a grammar lesson). I am the subject, doing a verb-thing (liking), and the taco is the object. It experiences the brunt of my verb-thing. If I change the verb-thing to, let’s say, EAT—“I EAT the taco” rather than “I like the taco”--then the object (the taco) is directly affected, as a proper object should be. It gets eaten and thus changed by me, the subject. Being an unabashed linguaphile, I frequently find myself pondering the semantics of stuff such as this.

Sound boring to you? Well, bear with me. The idea of “liking” doesn’t exist in all cultures. Did you know that in the Spanish language, for instance, there is no such verb as “to like”?  Hispanics simply do not “like” stuff. They have no word for it.  What they have instead is a concept I consider nothing short of brilliant.

Picture a pristine afternoon in the late springtime. This should be a warm and comforting image given the weather we have had here lately in Wisconsin.  After a morning rain shower, you are stepping out of your work building, in your shirt sleeves, for the first time all day. Rays of dancing sunlight reflect off of the remaining puddles on the sidewalk and street. The green of the grass hits your eyes and makes you squint for the beauty of it. Oh, yes, birds are chirping. It smells so fresh—washed clean. And you catch another scent as well:  across the way, at the far end of the plaza, you see it…the Taco Truck—finally opened for business after the long, frigid months of winter.  You pause, stalled, and raise both your arms up to the sky. “Me gusta,” you say, as you breathe it all in.

And you make your way over to the Taco Truck. You pay for your first taco of the season (make mine a fish taco, please), and you ceremoniously walk it over, along with the Corona you bought to go with it, to the picnic table. No matter the wet picnic table bench, or the damp grass spotting up your dress shoes. You are experiencing the best day of the year. After Instagramming your food, you take your first sacred bite. And you say, with salsa dripping down your chin, “¡Éste me gusta!”--This pleases me.

How many of us look at life and actually absorb the beautiful feelings that it offers to us? We always seem to be acting upon something, without stopping to experience the object or objects that give us so much pleasure. WE do the liking, but in the process, are we losing some of the “enjoying”?  Hispanic culture got this one right in my book: “It pleases me”. I am receiving the beauty of the world around me. I am not the one who affects change on an object. It is the object that changes me. (Sort of like “the wand choosing the wizard”). I have become different--more beautiful-- because of what I have just experienced. Me gusta.

Have you ever noticed the tail of a dog? Of course you have. I was feeding my pup a taste of the cat’s canned food off of a human spoon the other day. The entire time she was licking the spoon, her tail was wagging, like a metronome, back and forth. In fact, her whole back end was in motion. This was the best moment of her life. Cat food? A human spoon? Me gusta. Dogs know how to absorb pleasure.

I have a wonderful circle of friends and colleagues at UW River Falls. Many of them are musicians. What keeps them in music is certainly not the paycheck. It is what happens when the ebb and flow of musical sound eminates through the auditorium and makes the audience hold its breath for the joy and wonder of it. It is what happens when the voice of each instrument combines to create the perfect riff during a rehearsal, and we know in that moment that we have heard each other, responded to each other, and made music together. Me gusta. Me gusta mucho. 

So much fuller and more meaningful than merely liking, it has been a great change to my thinking about the world around me and how much it has to offer. “Me gusta” has to do with gratitude, appreciation, absorption.  It´s not something I accomplish. It is what I have opened my arms to receive, like the fullness of a spring afternoon…and a taco truck. It is one of my favorite pieces of grammar and culture. The next time you experience something that knocks your socks off, by all means, feel free to channel your inner Latino with a hearty ¡Me gusta!