Dear Favorite,
You always arrive uninvited.
I can’t decide you. I can’t reason my way into you. I can’t vote you in or talk myself into liking you more than I do. You simply show up one day and announce yourself. Favorite color. Favorite song. Favorite food. Favorite person.
I don’t choose you. I discover you.
Try it. Pick a new favorite color right now. Not one you already like. A truly new one. You can pretend. You can say the word out loud. But inside, nothing changes. The preference doesn’t follow the command.
The same is true for love. Fear. Attraction. Disgust. Comfort. We don’t sit down with a menu and make rational selections. These things happen to us. They land. They click. Or they don’t.
We like to tell ourselves we’re in control, but the truth is, our deepest preferences operate beneath the level of decision. They’re shaped by memory, biology, experience, culture, and patterns we never consciously agreed to. By the time awareness shows up, the verdict is already in.
So when we say something is our favorite, what we really mean is this:
Out of all the options presented to us by the world, our system reacted most strongly to this one.
That reaction wasn’t chosen. It was revealed.
So we ask you, dear reader:
How many of your strongest preferences were actually decisions?
And how many were discoveries that simply showed up and felt right?
Discovered, not decided,
~ The Radical Left