Oct 19, 2019 - 
Musings 
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Musings No Comments Savor this Life
| This special ‘blessing reminder’ was written by Terry Hershey. Please see his website at: https://www.terryhershey.com/sabbath-moment/ We are wired to savor. To live awake and attentive, present in the moment… “being spontaneously surprised by the goodness and beauty of living.” What is not a surprise is that savoring is also good medicine for our blue moods. But I forget that. Well, that’s not quite accurate; let’s just say that I get distracted, exhausted and too often, live numbed. A young man boarded an overnight train in Europe. He was told, “There have been a lot of recent thefts. We take no responsibility for any loss.” This worried the young man, because he carried a lot of stuff. So, he lay awake, fearing the worst, staring at his stuff. Finally, at 3 am, he fell asleep. Waking with a start twenty minutes later, he saw that his stuff was gone. He took a deep breath. “Thank God,” he said. “Now I can sleep.” Here’s my question; What is it that we carry (so dutifully) that keeps us from savoring? From living awake and present? The list seems longer these days (including things we didn’t sign up for). It is no wonder that we sometimes feel undone. I’ve talked about wrestling with depression and anxiety. When it rears its head (shrouded in mystery of course), I treat it like a challenge, or competition, expecting to figure it out. As if I’ll move past it, on to “real life”. So, of course, I google it. (Not a good first move. Just sayin’.) I scan the page and a pop-up screen flashes and squawks (literally), asking me to take a survey. My blood pressure now up, I close the box and scroll the article, sidetracked by several ads, playing as videos. Including an ad for a med I cannot even pronounce. There’s a depression(s) guide, with 30 plus types of anxiety to choose from, five articles to read, rabbit trails to follow. At the bottom, pictures with 8 more recommended articles, including foods to avoid. So, I hide my chocolate from the screen in case the computer is spying on me. I take the healthiest option; I start laughing, turn off my computer, and say out loud, “Thank God. Now I can sleep.” So. Back to savoring. “We are part of what is sacred,” William Kittredge reminds us. “That is our main defense against craziness, our solace, the source of our best politics, and our only chance at paradise.” Here’s the good news; The sacred isn’t always where you expect it. Say, the immediate vicinity. Can the beauty of living, surprised by the goodness and beauty of this life, be enough? “To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote, contemplating the art of seeing. And I love Simone Weil’s memorable assertion that “attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” This week I read that it’s a new day on Amtrak. No more sit-down meals. Which takes us again, to savoring. Rainesford Stauffer writes, “Just like Amtrak citing prepackaged meals as a chic and contemporary workaround to a prepared meal, the emphasis on ease — on maximizing every second — is supposed to be sexy. But it can feel exhausting. The idea that young people like me are always on the go, always in transition and always on, masks that we might actually desire slowness, want to relish an experience, or enjoy taking a moment to feel comfortable and human instead of curated and optimized. Our experiences at work, in our homes and even in transit can be chopped up into pieces of purpose and service. Anything else — any lingering, any humanity — can feel superfluous, or even wasteful, especially for a generation scapegoated as entitled for wanting things that used to be considered basic. It’s as though doing more (even when we’re doing something as simple and sedentary as riding a train) with less is always the ultimate goal. It’s not difficult to see why, when an advertisement highlighting convenience and quickness pops up, we believe maybe this really is the thing that will make life better. Maybe this is what ‘contemporary’ looks like. But I wish small things — meals on a train, unplanned moments that can’t be logged as self-improvement or furniture that is owned — didn’t feel old-fashioned. I wish people knew that my generation wants more than to optimize our lives, or to feel trendy because of how fast we’re hustling. I wish slowing down didn’t feel like a luxury.” And I say, Amen. So. Today, where can I pause, see, savor? And say, thank you? I learned a new word this week; Fika. Fika is an everyday Swedish tradition, about sitting down and having a coffee while spending time with someone else. Plain and simple, a moment to slow down, and appreciate the goodness and beauty of living. This week I shall Fika. And do you know what spills from savoring? When we see, we allow ourselves to care, to be invested. To see around us a profusion of “raw, unalloyed, agenda-less kindness” (David Foster Wallace). That’s easy to forget. Gallup released a recent poll on success, about what we value and the disconnect between personal views, and our perception of how society views success. The results are no shock. We think society honors fame and money. But personally, we would choose trustworthy, considerate and helpful. It’s a reminder that we measure the wrong things. And when we do, we carry superfluous and cumbersome baggage. When I savor, grace comes to life. Grace allows us to risk loving, to be unafraid of a life than can be messy. To make a space for something less than perfect in ourselves and in one another. To offer kindness and compassion. In a glance, in a word, in a touch. To create spaces, sanctuaries, where healing and hope are offered. To believe in goodness after harm. And to know that this light and love will always spill to the world around us. This week, distracted by work, rain and mental shenanigans, I turned toward the foothills of the Olympics. Resting in a saddle, a rainbow, taking a breather, blessing the earth. Or being blessed. And making me very glad to be alive. |
