Today was a glorious day and I experienced some moments that were so perfect in their simplicity that tears fell from my eyes out of sheer gratitude and joy. That’s not an exaggeration. The more I savored the simple moments, the more content I felt.
According to The Science of Well-being Course at Yale University, this tactic of savoring, or mindfully enjoying the moment, is key to our well-being. Join the 4.7 million learners who completed the course by enrolling for free through Coursera. I took the course during the lockdown of 2020 and learned quite a few valuable lessons. Out of many tactics, savoring stood out.
Back to today, picture it: I’m driving through curvy roads of endless fields and farmland with shades of greens and tans in rows, growing all kinds of nourishment for the community. The tallest trees barely eclipse the baby blue sky which goes on forever, only a few white wisps of clouds scatter across the horizon. With a heat wave in full force, the windows are down and the AC is on so both hot wind and cool air blow against my warmed skin.
I glance to my right to see my shotgun rider, my ride-or-die, my partner for life, humming and bobbing his head to the song on the radio, arm out the window riding the waves of the wind with his hand. I turn around slightly to see my 8-year-old retriever sitting up in the back seat, grinning big, tongue out, golden fur blowing with a force that creates tumbleweeds of his hair, floating around the car for just a moment before being swept out of the car and into the air, riding its own wave in the wind.
I think, “My whole world fits inside this car” as a wide smile takes over my face.
We listen to a playlist I downloaded of all John Legend songs because my amazing husband got us tickets months ago for a show that’s coming up this weekend: An Evening with John Legend. A new-to-us song comes on and I’m instantly drawn in to the soothing sounds. As I listen to the words, I realize this songwriter has magically taken my emotions, my innermost thoughts and feelings, and put them into a beautiful melody with a cool and casual rhythm. I grab my husband’s hand, using my thumb to gently caress his, and listen to the poetry John Legend sings to us within the chorus:
I will never try to change you, change you I will always want the same you, same you Swear on everything I pray to - That I won't break your heart. I'll be there when you get lonely, lonely Keep the secrets that you told me, told me And your love is all you owe me - And I won't break your heart.
Tears start to drip down my face as I intensely feel every word he is singing. (Tears are welling up again as I type this). It’s both the way I feel about my husband and it’s the way I feel loved by him. The entire song encapsulates our love in a profound way and I am blown away by it’s simple, stunning articulation of such a deep and strong emotion of love. Especially at the end of the song:
When no one seems to notice And your days, they seem so hard My darling, you should know this My love is everywhere you are.
I am astounded by how accurate the song is to how I feel in my heart and how it aligns with our relationship. I wipe away a tear from under my sunglasses and my husband notices. “Are you crying?” he asked with a quick laugh. “Yup!” I say, “It’s us.” He smiles and nods in agreement.
*Check out the music video of Conversations in the Dark below and try to not cry.
I held this beautiful moment as long as I could as we continued to weave through the rural landscape. While John Legend sang us other love songs, I took deep breaths and I mentally recalled each piece of this slice of heaven in the car as I experienced it. The colors and smells of the scene in front of and around me, the touch of the wind and air on my now slightly sunburnt arms, the full smiles on the faces of the man I love and our baby in the backseat, the sounds of the ride, both on the radio and outside our car. And all of it accumulated to create the joy I felt in my soul.
Once we got to the farm where we ordered lunch, the savoring continued while we chatted about the beautiful drive and the delicious homemade snacks we were about to taste while sitting on the wrap-around porch of the store. As I sipped a perfectly mixed iced vanilla chai, I continued to count my blessings. The drink was made even better because it was free!
We made the 45-minute drive out to September Farm because they do a daily giveaway where they post names of who can get a free ice cream or coffee on a specific day (great marketing strategy) and today was Katie Day! Not Kathleen or Kathryn but Katie - which is my full name. They take this promotion very seriously and even check ID to ensure it’s the correct spelling of your name! I’ve been following them online and waiting for well over a year for my day to arrive and today was my day. It was Katie Day!
I didn’t feel like my heart was exploding with happiness, it was a more subtle and simple emotion - a calm and clear feeling of contentment.
Contentment is Happiness’s little sister. You know, the sister who people often forget about while raving about how great Happiness is.
Everybody wants to meet Happiness, and tries to do whatever they believe Happiness would do instead of meeting Contentment where they are. Contentment doesn’t get the worldwide acclaim that Happiness gets; she is the little sister who stops striving, starts savoring, and grows up to heal generational trauma and discover Peace. That’s where Contentment lives, in Peace, with Joy, the limitless transformative version of her big sister, Happiness.
As I’m writing this, I am continuing to savor the experience, and the feeling of contentment grows. It’s like dominoes falling. This continual remembering just lengthens the experience of contentment and brings to mind more times I felt this amazing feeling of joyful acceptance.
That’s the power of savoring. As I continue to linger on the fantastic feelings of the day, the feelings continue to flood my mind, body, and spirit.
And since I’m thinking about it, I recall that at yoga the very same morning, the dharma talk and theme was on santosa which translates to contentment. Santosa is the second of the niyamas according to the Yoga Sutras of Pantajali. (There are hundreds of translations of the Yoga Sutras; this is the one I read and this is another well-known translation.) The niyamas are the five observances, or I like to think of them as the ways we ought to treat ourselves, and they make up the second limb of the eight limbs of yoga.
My teacher, Kate Goodyear, started our class by sharing some quotes from a translation of the Yoga Sutras that she likes by Edwin F. Bryant. “Contentment … manifests as disinterest in accumulating more than one’s immediate needs of life.” I’m reminded of the thought I had while in the car, that my whole life fits inside the car. All desire for something else, something more, had vanished and I met contentment there.
My teacher ended the yoga class with another quote from the book. “The sattvic happiness does not depend on external objects, which are vulnerable and fleeting, but is inherent in the mind when it is tranquil and contented.” This reminds me of another quote I’ve heard from Deepak Chopra: “Be happy for no reason at all. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.”
These messages guide us to be content right here, right now. They remind us to stop seeking and start savoring all the simple experiences of our life.
Savoring is remembering that contented feeling and allowing my mind, body, and soul to relish in it, to bathe in it, and allow it to soak into my pores, my very being.
Savoring is like using compounding interest to your benefit. You take a little bit of a good experience and savor each piece of the moment, and it grows exponentially, making you rich. So what will you savor today?
Journal Prompts:
Reflect on the last day or so and pick a few ordinary moments of your life to savor. Whatever situations you choose to remember, savor them by recalling the details of what you were doing, who was with you, and how you felt. Write out the sights, smells, and sounds of the experience. Be as descriptive as possible.
How would you define happiness and contentment? What are the similarities and what are the differences? When do you feel one versus the other? Are there any patterns to those experiences of one or the other?
Are there any songs that brought you to tears or made you feel a strong emotion when you first heard them? Write about that experience of hearing it for the first time. Look up those lyrics and re-read them. Write about how they make you feel now.