Savour Everything

After a hard day’s work, imagine your favourite meal being served to you on a silver platter. The smell. The sight. The taste about to be enjoyed. You take your first bite. Pure delight.

But each mouthful becomes less satisfying than the last. Straight after putting one bite into your mouth, your mind is focused on preparing the next one. You finish your meal and immediately eliminate the lingering taste with a gulp of water. You’re stuffed. 

And yet, you still have room for desert. Triple chocolate fudge cake. The pleasure of rich chocolate melting in your mouth lasts a few seconds, only for the taste to be washed away with another gulp of water. 

When you leave the table, you realise that you feel cold. So you put on your sweater. You’re warm now. But you notice that your sweater has stain on it. You feel annoyed. After shopping online for an hour, you buy three new sweaters. You feel relief. 

Until you open the next app on your phone. Instagram. Scrolling down, you see a picture of your friend smiling with joy on a boat in the Philippines. You want to be there. You feel sad.

You keep scrolling, your emotions swaying up and down at the whim of whatever you see in front of you. And so on, and so forth…

Insight:

Our pleasures are fleeting, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. We satisfy our senses, our curiosity, our interests. But happiness slips away the moment it arises. And the search goes on.

This is no reliable basis for lasting fulfilment.

Is there a happiness that does not depend upon having our favourite foods available, or friends within arms reach, or good TV shows to watch, or something to look forward to on the weekend?

Yes. By becoming aware of our moment-to-moment pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, we can step back and take ourselves off this never-ending treadmill. A deeper source of wellbeing exists beyond this. All we need to do is wake up.

Tool:

The tool here is not an app you can download, or a book to read. The tool here is a change in your pattern of thought.

When you next catch yourself enjoying an experience, make it last. Sit with it. Savour it. Whether it be a mouthful of delicious food, the bliss of music, or a stunning landscape in your view, don’t rush to move on. Cherish what is in your grasp, and hold on for as long as it remains. When it passes, feel the warmth of gratitude for experiencing the joy that the experience brought you.

Prompt:

When you next experience joy, notice when you are eager to move on. In the example of eating, notice when you are more focused on preparing your next mouthful than you are focused on enjoying the food in your mouth.

Don’t even think about picking up your knife and fork until you have savoured the taste of the food in your mouth.

Take it slow, stretch out your experience of joy, and let it fade organically before you seek to replace it with another moment of pleasure.

Written by Dr Manu Sidhu 🩺

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