embrace   your life

The word “savoring” crops up a lot in instructions for mindful eating, but why stop there? Inspired by the notion of taking more time to appreciate things, I recently decided to challenge myself to a week of savoring.

As I started out, I began to see that I was automatically leaving lots of things out—things that were, well, unsavory, less than pleasant—so the challenge had to undergo some immediate reengineering. It would have to become about savoring everything. Yikes.

That immediately led me to the understanding that if I was going to savor the unsavory I would have to be thankful somehow for whatever came my way. I would have to make “thankfulness” the default mode. And not just a “Yeah, thanks,” kind of thankfulness, but a fully welcoming kind of thanking, what I came to call “savory thankfulness.” A mouthful, yes, but it captures the spirit of the thing.

If I were to do this, I would have to embrace the artificially sweetened (but still valuable) “attitude of gratitude.” It was a bit of a revelation. What I was prepared for was taking time to really enjoy things, in the present moment. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much it would challenge underlying attitudes and assumptions. When the week was over, I came to some conclusions