Tuesday Tea | Savoring The Moment

There are so many moments that make up a day, a week, a month, a year, an entire life. Many will pass by as as inconsequential events that are not worth remembering. Yet many of those flickers in time give value to our present, and in so doing, bring joy to our lives. If you have ever sat mesmerized by rain droplets falling on your car window and running together in a sort of dance, or laid down on the grass to look up at the clouds and imagine pictures in the sky, or dipped your feet into a cool stream on a hot summer day and felt the wonder of the water rushing past, then you know how beautiful a single moment can be. 

My morning tea is a ritual that is all about savoring the moment. I hope that as you read this morning that you will join me with a beverage of your own that you enjoy. Today I wanted to discuss the little moments, like right now, that are composed together in a string of chords to make up your entire day. The little moments in between the big ones as you go to work, take care of family or business, or do something you love. When you savor the moment, you take in the good, and in so doing, you have the potential to change your brain for the better. 

You heard that right, by taking in the good, you can actually change your brain and rewire your synapses to make your brain more resilient and quicker to recover during difficult moments, to raise your natural level of happiness, and to increase your focus and mental health. One simple moment can help you appreciate the good and change your entire day and perhaps even the quality of your life. 

In the French film, Amelie, a young woman has a quiet and lonely life, but has a unique tendency to appreciate all the little things around her. Amelie enjoys skipping rocks in the Seine in Paris where she lives, loves the feeling of dipping her hands in bags of grain at the market, and cracking creme brûlée with a spoon. As the story unfolds, even as all these large events are going on around her, attention is still given to these simple moments that the characters enjoy in their daily lives. These small interludes made me smile as I watched the film because they reminded me of my own little quirks and simple pleasures that I enjoy. 

Like the first spoonful dug into a jar of raw creamed honey. 

I love honey in my tea and I receive a lot of joy from digging out the first spoonful from the soft surface in the honey jar. The feel of the spoon gliding into the honey, the lovely light scent perfuming the air, and the delicious taste as I lick some off the spoon before plunging the rest into my tea cup. I find great joy out of opening a new jar of local honey for this very reason. It transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary and brings a moment of sweetness to my morning. 

How to you savor the moment each and every day? What moments inspire you to slow down and appreciate the present? 

For me, it is digging into a new jar of creamed honey, the feeling of grass beneath my bare feet on a summer day, the way a page feels in my hand as I turn it to read a book, the smell of lilacs in Spring that takes me back to my childhood on Lakeside, the feel of my cat’s soft turn under my fingertips as he purrs, the feeling of awe as I face an entire field of sunflowers in July, a sip of green tea in the early morning, the sensation of slipping on my engagement ring as I get ready for work in the morning, the sound of birds outside my bedroom window, and riding my bicycle without hands. 

Children often feel these sensations of wonder every day and it inspires them to try and learn new things. As adults, we leave these little curiosities behind because we feel that they are distractions to getting things done. Our brains also have a “negativity bias” according to Dr. Rick Hanson, to describe the phenomenon of why our brains are so much better at picking out the bad than appreciating the good. For survival, this skill is handy, but for happiness it is detrimental to leading a more positive life.

How to take in the good:

1. Recognize when something positive is occurring. It could be a beautiful sunset, your favorite song on the radio, a warm bath, or the kindness of a stranger.  
2. Appreciate the good as it happens. In other words, savor it. Make it last, Mindfully think about what you are currently experiencing and why you enjoy it. The process of simply recognizing and appreciating the good as it happens will make the enjoyment more meaningful and have a lasting impact, even if the moment itself was fleeting. 
3. If something negative occurs shortly after, let it bounce off instead of focusing on it. Instead, think of the good that you just experienced a moment before. 
4. Make a list of the little pleasure that you enjoy. They can be simple fleeting things that you would usually not give more than a second thought, but for some reason you simply like. For example: the sound a typewriter makes when you press the keys, zipping up a backpack, the smell of coffee in the morning, the satisfaction of coloring in a design in a coloring book, the sound a can of soda makes when you pop the top open, a certain smell that reminds you of something special, or the coziness of your favorite blanket. Each gf us has our own little quirks of scents, sounds, and sensations that we find pleasure in. 

Savor the moment, because every second of life is worth experiencing.