Heroes Not Zombies

On a recent trip to Paris I came across this graffiti. It was the image of the girl with the balloon which caught my eye but, afterwards, when I looked more closely at the text, I saw it read – “Mange, et savoure la vie!” –

“Eat, and savour life!”

The two verbs, given as commands, are in the familiar, rather than the formal forms, which makes the advice somewhat more human, more friendly.

How do we eat life? I think it’s by consuming every experience, swallowing the everyday phenomena and making them a part of ourselves. Because, that’s what we do, don’t we? We encounter, we taste, we swallow, we digest, and we integrate our experiences into our selves. What we encounter, how we taste it, whether we swallow it, or spit it out, and how we process it, all goes to make us what we are. It all goes to make our lives what they are.

How do we savour life? By slowing down, consciously experiencing, and suspending judgement.

That reminds me of a plaque I once saw on the wall of a fisherman’s cottage in Provence –

Which can be read as “Go slowly in the morning, and not too fast in the evening”.

I think this is a key to happiness, a fundamental principle of how to live –

Savour the day

and slowing down, taking your time to notice and become aware, is the best way I know how to do that.