Savoring or Scarfing Life

What makes you feel happy?

I mean deep-seeded happiness at the core of your being?

Do you have a hobby you love to participate in??Perhaps you remember a purchase you made that in turn made your day??Maybe you, like me, love to search for items that will complete a collection you treasure??It could be that you were in the stands when your favorite team won the “big game”, or you got a call that gave you a great medical report or informed you that you got the job you really wanted.?Many of us might immediately think about the day we were married, or when a child was born.

Can you think about something right this very minute that sparks that same swell of happiness just as powerfully now as the day it occurred?

Now look at the picture at the start of this article.

That little boy is Liam, my niece’s youngest son, and he was 3 when the picture was taken.?What makes Liam happy??French fries and ketchup make him happy.?“Happy” might even be too limited a word for how Liam feels about his fries and ketchup.?

Look at his face.?

He is more than enjoying that fry, it’s an almost transcendent reverence written on his tiny features…the boy is enraptured enjoying what we might think of as one of the simplest pleasures of life.?He is fully immersed in enjoying that fry like it was a delicacy, his expression reading like a food critic that is tasting a truly gourmet meal. In his mind, however, it makes complete sense to stop and truly take in this moment that we might pay no attention to at all.?

In other words, he is taking the time to SAVOR it, where we would likely SCARF it and quickly move on.

Is there anything in that picture that we could learn from?

Maybe just this…the importance of learning the difference in life between savoring and scarfing, especially in the little things and small moments.

The word “savor” comes originally from the Latin, saporare, which moved to Old French, savorer, and it carried the thought of “taste”, but even more specifically it also meant “to breathe in, to appreciate, to care for”.?I think the concept behind the word, when tracked to its etymology like this, is beautiful, especially in the context of this article.

To savor something, anything, is almost like a time of meditation.?It’s to breathe in the moment, to genuinely appreciate what one is experiencing, and to care about what is occurring in the instant it is occurring in.?You could extrapolate the idea out that savoring something requires the ability to pause, focus, and fully embrace a sight, a smell, a taste, a sound or a feeling.

Scarfing, on the other hand, is a slang term, defined as consuming something in a voracious manner.?It’s taking something in without a whole lot of consideration, swallowing it down and moving on with little regard for what just happened, or what you experienced.

This world seems to be principally centered on taking things that impact our senses, and our happiness, and making them easier and easier to scarf, rather than savor.

We see the world in news bites and social media posts with a very limited number of characters.?We taste our food often on the run through drive throughs, or carry out orders, frequently eating it while splitting our attention between multiple screens.?We feel the need to hustle quickly from one task to the next, wearing out our affinity to products and purchases in shorter and shorter time frames before looking for the next bigger, better, “all new” item, and invest in all kinds of tools at work that will help us produce faster, pivot more rapidly and meet demands that grow ever more urgent.

If we considering savoring life much at all, it is often reserved for special occasions like vacations, holidays, or sometimes the weekend, when we are not filling that time up with all of the activities that must be done but cannot be done during work hours throughout the week.

Scarfing is all about living in a hustle-centric life, which we seemed to get trained is the way in which we get ahead and obtain all of the things we think we want.

It was a fortuitous coincidence that while I was preparing this post, my Creative Director sent me a link to a brief, but powerful, article he had found, titled “The World Belongs to Those Who Hustle”.?In it, the author, Joshua Becker, states things like:

“Rush, push, work harder.

Persist, fight, and claw to the top.

If you work hard and hustle more, you can own the world.

Our media is full of advice encouraging us to hustle, hustle, and hustle some more.

Here are just a few titles ripped from recent headlines:??

·?????3 Steps to ‘Hustling’ for Success (Time Magazine)

·?????Hustle as Strategy (Harvard Business Review)

·?????10 Habits Of Highly Successful Hustlers (LifeHack)

·?????The 6 Best Ways to become Rich (Yahoo!)

We post hustle quotes as inspiration on our social media feeds and posters in our workplaces. The Internet boasts thousands of them:

·?????Hustle until your haters ask if you’re hiring.

·?????Good things happen to those who hustle.

·?????Hustle like you’re broke and keep that passion.

·?????Hustle until you no longer need to introduce yourself.

·?????Don’t stay in bed unless you can make money in bed.

I don’t disagree with the adage. No doubt, those who hustle will end up owning the world.

I’m just not sure the world is what I most want to own.

What does it benefit a person to gain the entire world, but lose themselves along the way?

Some of the greatest blessings in life cannot be experienced if our lives are constantly filled with hustle chasing after the world.

In fact, many of the most important pursuits of our lives require us to stop “hustling.” They require quiet, peace, solitude, even rest.

Becoming the best version of ourselves will always require less hustle.

The requirements are listening ears, quality time, and focused attention.

But for those who are tempted to lose their soul through hustle in a relentless desire to gain the world, you are making an unwise trade.

There is great reward to be found in more stillness…and less hustle.”

(You can read the entire article here: https://tinyurl.com/9wyza7wh)

Can you relate??Do you ever feel the pressure to constantly hustle in life?

All it takes to savor life for little Liam is some french fries and ketchup, and while I am not suggesting that particular snack is the answer to complete human fulfillment and contentment, unless perhaps you are a three-year-old, I think between that initial picture and the simplicity of that cuisine, might lie a recipe that gets us closer as adults.

Allow me to posit a thought to you, one that I would like you to consider carefully.

Maybe, every single day there are those “fries and ketchup” moments that deserve to be savored…breathed in, appreciated and cared about…more than we typically give them credit for.?It might be that in our hustling world, our inclination is instead to simply scarf these moments and move on quickly, overlooking their significance and ability to change our mindsets, attitudes, and outlooks.

What can these “fries and ketchup” moments appear as?

·?????Open our eyes in the morning, even at the sound of an alarm clock, with good health and the ability to get out of bed and start another day.

·?????Taking time to have a cup of coffee in some degree of solitude, and think about the day, or even just life, without being plugged into ear buds and/or screens of any kind.

·?????Getting outside for any amount of walking, breathing in some fresh air and stretching legs that may have been sitting for extended periods of time throughout the workday.

·?????Recognizing that even though our “to-do” list for work never seems to get completely done, we did good work, got some things accomplished and gave our best in all of our efforts.

·?????Seeing a loved one, a spouse, a child, at the end of the day, feeling a hug, experiencing a kiss on the cheek or a pat on the back, from those we care most for and that are closest to us.

·?????Sitting in the beams of the sun, streaming in from the window, or listening to the sound of the rain hitting the windowpane, while we go about our everyday business.

·?????Hearing a compliment, or a word of encouragement, at just the right time when we were feeling worn, and we needed it the most.

·?????That moment when someone looks past your “Fine” response to the standard, “How are you?” and digs a little deeper because they know you well enough to tell something’s wrong, and they truly care.

·?????Taking the opportunity to send a quick email note to someone who you know is struggling, taking on a challenge or feeling stressed, letting them know you appreciate them and encouraging them to keep going.

·?????Experiencing a dinner where the TV is off, the phones are put away, texts and emails are not being checked, and the cares of the workaday world are put on hold temporarily…and you are able to just talk and decompress.

This list clearly has no end, and these bullet points are a drop in the bucket when it comes to moments that can pass so quickly, and we can treat so inconsequentially, if we don’t purposefully look to savor them.?Moments worth savoring happen to us and around us every single day, and we can easily scarf them up and move out without a second thought…we’ve all done it…because we are pushing forward so something “big” will happen.

While we wait and anticipate the “fine dining” meals of vacations, holidays, weekends, promotions, and sudden windfalls, all of these “fast food” moments that can sustain us, encourage us, recharge us and inspire us are voraciously eaten up and plowed through.

So, I’m asking you to do me a favor this week.

Each day, pause your hustle, even if just for a moment.?Each day make a conscious effort to notice the small things, the seemingly inconsequential minutes and seconds that contain something, anything, good in them…then remember little Liam and savor it.?Breathe in, appreciate and care about even the tiniest of positive, smile-inducing, happiness-laden moments that might have skated right past you previously.?You do that often and intentionally enough, it can certainly change your present outlook and attitude, it might even change your life.

I recently read a quote from the philosopher Atticus, where he wrote:

“It pays to dwell slowly on the beautiful things…the more beautiful the more slowly.”

There’s some powerful truth to that thought that supports my premise, I believe.?It can begin this week for all of us in recognizing that perhaps pausing to savor even small, but beautiful things, pairs perfectly together with overall life contentment and fulfillment, kind of like…fries and ketchup.