The Solo Pour

“I know what I like.”

I said that with confidence as an 18 year old college freshman sitting in Dr. Penn’s class.

It felt complete. Certain. Settled.

He didn’t argue. He didn’t lecture.

He just looked at me and said,

“You like what you know.”

That was it.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. It sounded like a small correction. Maybe even semantics.

But it stayed with me.

Because what he was really saying was this:

Your world is smaller than you think it is.

At 18, I believed I understood my preferences. What mattered. What I valued.

But all of it was shaped by what I had already seen.

What I had already experienced.

What I had already been exposed to.

He was pointing to something bigger.

That preference isn’t always clarity.

Sometimes it’s just familiarity.

I carried that with me, even when I didn’t fully understand it.

Life has a way of filling in what you miss early on.

Mistakes.

Blind spots.

Moments where you realize you didn’t see the full picture.

Like the car accident.

Completely my fault. I wasn’t paying attention and ended up in someone’s yard, damaging their property.

That kind of moment strips things down quickly.

No confidence. No assumptions. Just reality.

And again, he showed up.

Not to correct me. Not to remind me I was wrong.

He helped me walk through it the right way. Take responsibility. Handle it honestly. Do what needed to be done.

That’s when the lesson started to take shape.

Not all at once.

But over time.

Now, at 61, I’m finally beginning to understand what he meant.

Not in theory.

But in the way life actually unfolds.

We don’t just outgrow what we know.

We expand it.

We see more.

We understand more.

We recognize that what once felt certain was just a small piece of something much larger.

“You like what you know.”

It wasn’t about preference.

It was about awareness.

About humility.

About staying open enough to keep learning, even when you think you’ve arrived.

I’m grateful he said it the way he did.

Simple. Direct. No lecture attached.

Because it stayed.

And it takes a lifetime to fully hear it.