My grandfather would take me along and we'd go to the neighbour to fetch eggs. He had a plastic bucket that he put them in with some old newspapers scraps in the bottom. I heard that before the war they didn't even need money. He'd simply bring a bucket of milk, and he'd get a bucket of eggs in return. But it was of course a lot simpler to bring money. It was far cheaper than in the store too.
My grandfather knew what all the birds were singing. Every bit, plus their behaviour. He'd especially heed the magpie, because it's a smarter bird. If it warbled this way, it meant that the weather would stay warm. If they warbled in another way, it meant that it might become rainy. He said that the birds knew, because their lives depended on it.
Another more commonly known sign is dependent on where the magpie makes its nest. If it it's high in the tree, then it will most likely be a warm and sunny summer. But if it is tucked way down in the tree, the summer will be cold and wet. It makes sense. There's more protection from the elements further under the leaves, but it's also colder there. If I were a magpie, I'd want to make a warm and nice nest for the summer, but all that could be ruined if I didn't heed the weather.
One day, the grouse was seen perching atop the family house. When I told this to my grandmother, she went silent at first, and then she told me that it means someone will die in the family. This was of course terrifying news to me. But it also turned out to become true, because my grandfather also died that year. May he rest in peace.
I buy into a lot of the “bird” wisdom. Science is discovering dogs can smell disease.
Our modern world isn’t more complex, just more distracting with asinine theory chasing. It’s always been ridiculously complex in ways we can’t imagine, we’ve just started realizing it in detail.
Turns out animals with their “lesser” cognitive powers are tuned into the hidden complexity in ways we barely understand.
Yet we deem ourselves the more advanced species.
Humans will surely kill themselves off and the specifically evolved for their ecosystem “dumb” animals will remain.
Do you actually believe the grouse perching on house was foreshadowing??
I’ve heard that humans had a long period of time after we became sedentary and started relying on agriculture that the average height decreased significantly, and it was only in recent centuries that it has gotten back to normal due to more varied nutrition. So even if you can technically survive on a very limited diet, it can still have negative effects.
The idea of not using an innumerable number of fruits, vegetables, meats, and spices available is crazy to me. We’re even excited to go back to the city try at various times of the year because different seasons bring different foods.
So is tending to a farm.
We need some amount of stressors in our lives to keep from feeling bored and stagnant. Exercise is literally an imposition of stress, but increases our well-being. Really a matter of picking your poison.
Farming might be samey, but if something is hard work it's also stressful.
"My uncle, a bachelor and farmer like me, had the same food for every meal. He had bread, butter, cheese and tea for breakfast, lunch and dinner (although he would bring out the jam for visitors)."
It's not like we do this to because variety is intrinsically good and we have to force ourselves. It's more like we're addicted to variety; the more often you have the same meal the less appetizing it becomes.
Would it be less stressful and inconvenient if you could put the same thing in your bread every day?
Do you imagine that would make you more happy or less happy?
The fisherman proudly replied, “Every morning, I go out in my boat for 30 minutes to fish. I’m the best fisherman in the village”.
The businessman, perplexed, then asks the fisherman “If you’re the best, why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish? What do you do the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, spend quality time with my wife, and every evening we stroll into the village to drink wine and play guitar with our friends. I have a full and happy life.”
The businessman scoffed, “I am successful CEO and have a talent for spotting business opportunities. I can help you be more successful. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats with many fishermen. Instead of selling your catch to just your friends, you can scale to sell fish to thousands. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to the big city, where you can oversee your growing empire.”
The fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the businessman replied, “15 – 20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the fisherman.
The businessman laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The businessman said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, spend time with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”
I imagine the farmer you're telling us about doesn't want attention, material possessions, or any kind of excess at all. This person is happy to build something slowly over time, in small increments. They're happy with what they have, who they are, and that they exist.
I think there are elements in your portrayal that we can all strive for, whether this person was a farmer, carpenter, or programmer, doesn't really matter.
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
The complete lack of variety in his dining routine in particular is something I'd never want to emulate. This man is basically a low tech Soylent bro, using food as just a source of nutrients. He raises sheep (and is not a vegetarian) yet never even eats mutton or cheese?
He’s a 72 year old Batchelor who’s once stepped foot outside a Welsh valley. If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don’t choose it.
I mess around with the soup occasionally trying new flavoring or techniques but its the same damn soup and I like it. Its easy to make, keeps well, costs nothing relative to output, and leaves me time to think about other things other than food. Also its very healthy.
At this point its just a habit. Sunday or Monday evening is soup making time. Two hours nets me two weeks of food.
Then when you have something different and special, it really is special.
My family loves to have something great for every single meal. It’s very excessive and unnecessary - but I keep it to myself and let them enjoy it. It’s not a bad or destructive habit at all, I just wonder often if they value or appreciate it as much as they could.
Of course we are advised to have a varied diet but I suspect that is because most people have such poor eating habits. If you can squeeze all the nutrients you need into a single dish then why wouldn't it work.
If we humans optimize by happiness, then we should have nothing but envy for a life like Wilf Davies leads.
It's great he's happy with the life he has chosen. But I personally find people who are even slightly like that (i.e. closed off to new experiences) depressing to be around. My parents are kind of like that, and have been as long as I can remember. But to each their own.
I think he's sad because they _do_ go to the effort of hearing the cuckoos, but they're rushing. They're not fully present, and so they don't get the full experience.
He, by contrast, is very present in the things he does. That he doesn't choose to do many things is a different topic.
People are different.
Life before plenty was hard and boring by our standards. You can still see this in poorer, remote areas -- my experience is mainly with the American midwest and random foreign travel. There simply isn't much to do (or eat, or see), unless you're close to a big city.
Sure, he's an extreme and very few want to emulate it because there's a mild element of delusion. But, he's found the thing so many of us work our entire lives for only to never find.
Part of life is letting happiness find you, part of life is finding happiness, and part of life is pushing away things to find happiness in what you have.
I say, well done.
I think contentment is closer to what he's found, his world makes sense in his context and is comfortable and familiar.
Happiness is what you want when you are young, contentment is what you get if you are lucky later.
I think that is how it should be, it's a good progression since too much contentment when you are young would have made me less driven and been less driven wouldn't have helped me reach a point of contentment in my late 30's.
I have a partner who loves me and I her in return, a stable job I enjoy, money in the bank and time and money for my hobbies - it's not euphoric happiness but that never lasts, contentment can.
The happier somebody is the more deluded they look to the rest of us. People in love are perhaps the most obvious. But it says probably more about the observer.
Why do you say he seems deluded to you?
My dad arranged something similar for my mom in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. It is nearly impossible in the US, I don’t even know if you can still do it without being wealthy. It required long term care insurance prepaid for years, and it was still a nightmare of weekly paperwork to manage all the claims. The care for his sister, and treatment and recovery for multiple strokes - out of reach for many farmers around the world. This man is very lucky indeed.
I see a lot of comments that seem to see all the things you miss out on in this situation. But in my mind, it frees up a lot of mental effort, time and stress. If I ever get bored I can go to a restaurant and eat something wild and it will be all the more exciting given I don't optimize for excitement or luxury in my everyday steady-state.
When Soylent came out I was super excited about this idea. Don't think about three meals a day that you normally fuss over, and instead have two predictable, quick meals and optimize to make the third one amazing. Soylent was OK, and DIY soylent offered some hope too. The third meal WAS always amazing, in a relative sense, and tasted better somehow than when I had the same thing before this diet. Unfortunately liquid diets are just not satisfying to me and so frozen meals won out.
I'd love to find other areas of my life that can be similarly optimized. I have hope for bill management services to take the annoyance out of juggling payments etc., and roboinvestors or similar automated financial services. Doing these things manually offers no excitement and no added value beyond the transitively provided service so I don't think they should take up my life.
The amount of time wasted across the whole human population on things like preparing meals, choosing outfits and managing everyday responsibilities must be huge and that is all time that could be spent doing other exciting or valuable things.
I recommend decreasing your gadgets to just a phone (for when you go out) and a tablet or laptop for home. That is, no TV, no stereo, no games console. Assuming you live on your own, you can do all the same things you did before, just move your laptop screen to a comfortable distance. I suppose you could buy headphones if you also want loud audio, but personally I prefer to go out to a bar or nightclub or movie theater to get that experience.
You can also optimize most of the furniture away. The last few places I lived I just had a mattress in the main/living room and cooking supplies in the kitchen. Not only is the up-front cost less, but you can live in a much smaller apartment, cleaning the whole place is much faster, moving house is easy. Personally I like to work lying on my stomach, so I don't need a desk, but I suppose you could get a small table and chair if your body isn't comfortable lying down or sitting on the floor for a lot of the day. More available floor space means it's easier to pace or work out too.
Other recommendations... Best to live somewhere without carpet, so you can clean it with a broom - saves buying a vacuum cleaner. You can use toilet paper for the bathroom and also in the kitchen and also to blow your nose. You can use shampoo for everything in the bathroom, including washing your hair, hands, body and clothes (if your house doesn't have a washing machine). You can use dishwashing liquid to clean most surfaces in the house, as well as your dishes. You can avoid using lights for most of the day/night by keeping windows uncovered and using the ambient light from outside.
The upsides are exactly as you say - since you're not spending as much time and money maintaining your house, you have more time to go out and visit interesting places, and you can spend more money at nice restaurants or splurge for a comfortable hotel if you want to enjoy some luxury every now and then. But I find I don't really want to. Life is a lot more enjoyable, in my opinion. Way less stress than cleaning and maintaining a bunch of stuff.
You’re probably familiar with auto bill pay (I think most services have it, and many banks offer it as well), and index fund investing with automatic transfers, so I’m guessing those don’t solve the problems you’re talking about. I’m interested what you mean then.
Soylent is terrible for your insides.
I’m surprised the guy in the article could go decades without eating any veggies but his diet has clearly worked for him.
The strokes could just be genetics and/or old age catching up.
Is it clear, given the multiple strokes? We don't know with certainty whether the diet was a significant factor, but it's possible.
Doesn't he eat a whole onion every night? Onions are vegetables right?
I would agree it sounds like a lack of green veggies, though, if that's what you meant.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-2-million-years-humans-ate...
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV9spqCzSkQ or https://joythebaker.com/2015/01/whole-roasted-onions/
Garlic can be roasted in similar manner.
How do you eat an onion for supper? Raw, or cooked? If cooked, how do you cook it?
For example, you can put butter or lard on bread, spread those small pieces of onion on it, add salt. It is actually good.
You can also cut it into thick ovals and bake. Third option is to caramelize it. But, these two are time consuming.
If you like stronger flavours, you can add your favourite salad dressing to a chopped or sliced raw onion (I usually add extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar and oregano).
Something missing here.
Wales is poor, outside the cities. You can still buy a house for £10k here (it'll be shit obviously). He'll likely get some subsidies and his pension now too, and I imagine he probably trades for some of his food. Eggs for fish, that sorta thing.
He is a wealthy man that owns a farm. Same story about someone who would be a bartender in a local pub, where he was just an employee serving local drunks, would be much sadder one.
He's got 70 sheep mate. In Romania (IIRC) they'll unironically gift you farms like this because there's nobody else there to maintain them and you basically get some land for free. As the man himself points out it's a very simple life that involves a lot of hard work during all seasons, he's not privileged. Most people move out because life even in the service industry is easier.
However yes, you are right that many local people will have had to move away for work. Aside from Aberystwyth there's not a huge amount of work out that way. Lots of them will come down south to Cardiff and Swansea.
And now we are fascinated by a man living in the same place all his life. It's funny how the concept of norm changes in 100 years.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. -- T.S.EliotAnd then most people spent a year at home. Strange times.
An injury or illness leading to bed rest can cause clots to form. Clots can just form anyways. High blood pressure. Which, again, becomes increasingly common as people age regardless of fitness level and diet.
As a person with some anxiety and (what I have diagnosed in myself as underlying) self-esteem issues, this is something that I have been thinking about.
People around me tend to think that "oh, throwawayhermit is just a bit of hermit and likes to be on their own", which is partially true and my introvertedness needs time on its own. But on the other hand, a big part of my closing off from others is anxiety and self-esteem issues, which I presume are not that easy to spot at first when a person "seems confident and well off".
So, that has got me thinking, how many of the people closing themselves off from others are doing it because they are happy that way and how many are hiding from issues/fears (regardless whether they realize it themselves or not)?
> Routine is a way of not stressing yourself out with newness and the possibility you might not cope, and fail.
I feel that there is a place for routines. They can give you space to focus on something that actually matters, teach you mental discipline and give you some kind inner peace from not constantly searching for new and shiny things.
>I will eat twice a day, breakfast and lunch four hours later.
>...
>I say, “Cows only eat grass and wolfs only eat meat”
>Modern society is so boring and there is so much food that we have to be stimulated by spices and chefs and different foods to eat. At sea in a small boat its different. Life itself out there is so interesting that I do not need stimulants.
>My breakfast consists of one can of sardines, one slice of dense dark rye bread and muesli.
>...
>My lunch is the same as breakfast but no sardines.
And vice versa, wolves also eat plants sometimes https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/feed-your-dog-like-a-w....
Working in tech it’s very hard not to get lost in rat race and always go for more money, more knowledge, more everything. I’m actively trying to avoid it, but it gets to me as well. And most of my friends think I’m weird that I don’t want to get one more promotion or why I don’t want to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I’m fine where I am.
https://twitter.com/WilfDavies3/status/1244888108413394944
Edit: Yes, just a different Wilf Davies, but also from Wales.
The funny thing is that at the time, I thought nothing of it! It was just a part of my morning routine, not a sign of poverty or an unusual personality. I still don't think it's unusual at all, many people eat the same breakfast every day.
Yet, this horrifies her. She cooks a different breakfast every morning and refuses to eat leftovers from yesterday. I never had a problem eating something my Mom cooked on the weekend for three or four days in a row. Schnitzel is delicious for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!
People have very different ideas of what meals should be.
While we have similar ideas about breakfast, my girlfriend makes large ish but quick cooked meals for lunch, whereas for me lunch is always a light meal like a sandwich and a cup of tea. Dinner is the main event for me, a reward for a day's work and a way to unwind, whereas to her it's just to tide you over until bedtime. Living together reveals these things.
Of course, if I'm at a hotel, I storm the buffet and try all kinds of things. Surely my breakfasts would be much more creative if I had a cook and a butler.
Most work of the day concentrates between early hours of the morning and lates hours of the afternoon.
Most of your day is usually free-time. Better than a 9-5 IMHO
> I've had several strokes
a) Eat to live instead of living to eat
b) Being too lazy to commit more than 5-10 minutes for food preparation.
c) Being single where I could own my decisions and "weirdness".
He should visit - most people in London don't live in tower blocks, and there's lots of nature around.
There are wild deer in Richmond Park, and Hampstead Heath is almost indistinguishable from any other forest (and quite close to the very center of London).
For me personally, I have a very high inclination for novelty, even if that novelty comes with the risk of a bad experience. I just can't imagine doing, seeing, eating, working on, or talking about the same things my whole life. Heck, I work in tech but keep floating the idea of opening a restaurant to my wife (which promptly gets shot down).
For other people in my family, they know what they like, and that's that. Why fix what's not broken? I can't relate to that viewpoint one bit, but I can respect it.
Edit: Actually, now that I think about it some more, my desire for novelty might depend on the topic. I rotate between about three colors of T-shirts and wear the same brand of jeans every day and have no desire to branch out beyond this. Maybe openness is not a personality trait that applies universally to everything.
My desire for novelty can be problematic. I find it difficult to maintain long term sexual relationships. I'm so bored of having the same sex in the same positions over and over again. But I'm also too introverted to be happy with polygamous or short term relationships, not too mention how expensive that lifestyle is.
Like you, though, I don't seek novelty in all aspects of life. I too wear the same few t-shirts and same pair of jeans every day. Maybe there is just so little room for novelty here that it doesn't matter? What difference does it really make to me if I wear a pink t-shirt instead of green? My girlfriend, of course, buys new clothes almost every week.
I also don't change things for the sake of it. My desire for novelty doesn't override if it ain't broke don't fix it. When I cook something I've cooked many times before, I will reproduce the method exactly and produce consistent results. My girlfriend will slightly change things every single time, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. My dad cooks like this too. I think he actually does seek novelty in the way he cooks something. If I cook a dish and it's delicious it will be just as delicious next time. If he cooks and it's delicious, next time he'll add a completely new ingredient to it, for better or worse.
His diet doesn’t sound the worst, he seems to be active, just genetics? The beans every morning? He didn’t mention what he does for dinner.
I purchased 3.3 acres of land this year to begin the process of simplifying. I'm leaving the software world over the next couple years to have a life of homesteading.
I married into a traditional small town Indian family last year.
One of the biggest idealogical challenges I've faced is the duality of ambition. My family in law live similar to the farmer. Low entropy. I know where they will be every day every 15 minutes, what they will eat, with little exception.
It's such a stark contrast to my personal life, which has been characterized by the constant need to improve, challenge, and adapt. I don't know what I'll be doing 15 minutes from now let alone 2:00 - 2:15 a year from now.
I personally am not an absolutist, and so I don't think there's a particular lifestyle that is wrong or right, but it's an salient dichotomy and something that I've found challenging to reconcile in practice.
I hope eventually I can raise my family in a farm-environment while working remotely, and get some extra income on top of that by growing stuff in small scale.
And he will be just as happy (if not happier) as any of us reading this article.
Probably the most inspiring two sentences I've read in years. There's good in the world.
State of satisfaction and living in present moment is one very difficult to achieve.
Having family members who get sick of things changes that. There are certain of my favorites that are now off limits because I made them too many times in a row. Those things have to wait until they're all out of town for some reason. ;-)
Being content with what you have is great, but arbitrarily avoiding new experiences, even those at small cost (e.g. trying an Indian lentils recipe) is probably the biggest regret maximiser I can think of, for me personally.
All the other stuff about enjoying nature, his surroundings etc, is great of course. But I don't see how it's mutually exclusive with some of the other things (like trying different foods worldwide nature + worldwide culture has to offer) that feel more like a stubborn pride to be able to say 'look how down to earth I am, compared with you fancy city folk'.
I can definitely empathise with his mindset, especially after many years in the city. Though being from a culinary-centered culture, the one size fits all meal is really depressing to think about, especially that he probably can get some really good produce from people in his network.
Being a farmer is really something different and here in Western Europe (I'm going to assume there's not that much difference between UK and FR farming cultures), it's really a labour of love.
I've been lucky to have some exposure to this world through my family and people often have the wrong perception of it and quite often looked down upon by people that should know better.
That is some heavy Zen right there.
Also: "two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and a few biscuits at the end"
Is probably very healthy. Minimal sugar, high protein. Would be nice to have a bit of veg and that would be it.
His voice of London seems to be relatively naive, since there are relatively few what I would call 'great tower blocks' here.
One of you is wrong. Which is it?
That aside, articles like these are more about convincing the author than anyone else in my view. That doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. See for example Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. He repeatedly mulls over the prospect of death, with aphorisms to suggest it's nothing to be afraid of. Death was on his mind. This farmer seems to focus on conveying that he has every reason to be happy. It's no coincidence that suicide rates are highest among farmers - is this man simply built different, or is he convincing himself?
> two pieces of fish, an onion, an egg, baked beans and biscuits
every single day is a contributing factor. I'm all about simplifying life, but think we should remember that eating a varied diet is fairly important to well-being.
There are some rich people here on HN. Can somebody pay him a week there?
I know I'd do it if I had 7 digits on my bank account.
Very true. Especially if one never starts a family.
If it is for the meal i would be surprised, because he eats the most diverse meal than a few billion people in the world.
I wonder if his eating routine might be linked to it.
Four sandwiches for lunch, that quite and amount of white bread for a single person, every day.
I eat the same thing for both breakfast and dinner.
This sums up the article
I recognize a lot of myself and several of my family members in the letter, but I think they’d take it the same way.
Would he still be "enlightened" and "content" or brainwashed, oppressed and a victim of propaganda?
He compares himself to the animals: "They never ask for anything different for supper".
> "People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible"
As a bachelor, how will he know what it is like to look into the eyes of a loved with whom you form a new family? Without watching TV, how will he know that movies like "Up" (Pixar 2009) or series like "Breaking Bad" are well worth spending their time, without incurring a dramatic time penalty in your life? Take the TV out to the porch, if staying inside is such a pain. How can he be sure that a visit to the British Museum in London isn't worth the effort, or time, or whatever he thinks that speaks against it? Will he find laughing people in the cafes of the city?
All of this feels like a "too afraid to discover" that he disguises it as a "secret to a good life". Not a happy life, but a good life. His sheeps make him happy. Like his spouse or kids could make him happy, or a trip to the city or watching 40 minutes of TV once a week. Or a delicious steak. Or riding a bike on a trail, if he weren't so old by now.
I wonder if the Welsh radio station has told him about the current dilemmas which AI is confronting us with, or if he thought about where and under which circumstances all this gear he owns to exercise his role of a farmer has been developed and produced and if his lifestyle, if applied to everyone, would have made it possible for this gear to exist.
It's OK if he decides to eat the same supper every day, if he prefers not to live with people, but to me this feels more like an elaborate thinking system designed to avoid something which would cause him pain, which doesn't cause pain to others.
Sure there is a lot to criticize about our modern life, and many people aren't happy living in the city and with their day to day jobs, or with their family situation, but he has built himself a very tall wall in order to be shielded from him being possibly affected by these problems and calls it a good life. Not much of a difference to a suburban man who tolerates his job, hates his kids, but has the biggest amount of fun when he jumps into his glider on the weekends, watches his favorite TV series at the end of the day and loves to go jogging every day for an hour. Or have a beer with a friend.
At least his sheep are among themselves, maybe some of them enjoy spending their time together and are glad to get anything to eat at all. But how would he know, if he's just happy pretending to be a fellow sheep and calls it a day.
Then again, there are comments like the one from telesilla.
Please do not beat the post's corpse any further :) Thank you.]
I respect people who've tried something and decided it's not for them. But to never even try a different kind of food? I suspect it's less that he's found what he likes and more that he's scared he'd find out he actually liked something else better, and has wasted those 10 years.