Imagine buying something beautiful under one condition: nobody will ever know you own it. You cannot photograph it, mention its maker, leave it somewhere a visitor might notice, or receive the small pleasure of someone recognising it. You can use it every day. The enjoyment is entirely available. Only the witness has been removed.

Would you still choose it?

The question sounds like a test of character. It is more useful as a way of noticing how many different desires can inhabit a single purchase. We may love the feel of a coat and the person it allows us to resemble. We may enjoy a difficult film and enjoy being someone who enjoys difficult films. These pleasures arrive together, often too closely entwined to separate honestly.

Taste develops in company. Someone introduces us to a musician. A friend orders something we would never have chosen. We learn to recognise workmanship because another person shows us where to look. Even our most private preferences have histories populated by other people. Wanting appreciation does not automatically make an attachment false.

The difficulty begins when recognition becomes necessary for enjoyment.

A purchase feels incomplete until someone notices. A meal loses some of its excitement when the photograph fails. We discover that the unfamiliar label on a favourite object matters more than we admitted, especially once it becomes familiar to everyone else. What changed was the social information the object carried. The object itself may be exactly as good as before.

There is a particular exhaustion in maintaining pleasures that need an audience. We must keep the audience informed, and we must keep choosing things it will understand. Eventually, anticipation starts to resemble publicity: before an experience has happened, we are already imagining how to describe it.

Private enjoyment moves at a different pace. You can replay the same song for months. You can wear the unfashionable thing because its weight feels right. You can discover that an inexpensive cup is the one your hand reaches for every morning. No explanation needs to improve these facts.

This is also where preference becomes more specific. Without the obligation to make a defensible choice, you begin noticing what actually pleases you: the slightly awkward handle, the passage everyone else skips, the fragrance that becomes interesting only after the guests have left.

Perhaps the useful experiment is small. Keep one pleasure unannounced. Let it remain outside the running account of who you are. Give it enough time to become ordinary.

Then notice whether you return to it.