Are You Enjoying This Day?

Hello, friends! I am resting from blogging this week, to do exactly what I have prescribed in this post, so here is a little something I wrote in early 2012. It seems a perfect reminder for us on a busy day.

My son had a horrible cold, so I kept him home from school. There was one errand I had to run, though, so I bundled up the miserable little child in a big, cozy blanket and tucked him into the van.

Do you want mommy to buy you a hot chocolate? I said, to assuage my guilt for dragging him around town.

He wasn’t too sick for that, so I pulled into a road-side coffee stand. Two dollars later I handed him a steaming cup of chocolate and waited as the barista prepared my single-shot mocha latte.

As she handed my drink through the window, from the back seat I heard the loud sucking sound of a straw on empty cup bottom.

My sweet momma voice turned into another flavor, as I whipped my head around and hollered at my sick little boy.

You already drank that whole thing? I said. I paid two dollars for that. Don’t you know you’re supposed to savor it? Sip it slowly? Enjoy drinking it?

Sorry, he said.

It is one of my greater parenting moments.

I learned today of a Chinese expression “man zou”, which means “walk slowly”. It is used to express goodbye or see-ya-later.

A reminder to savor life as we go along.

Walking slowly is easy when the day has a lot of wiggle room, but today my list of things to do is so long I already know I will fail to get through half of it. What if I really need to hit the floor running?

Solomon gives us this wisdom:

However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all.  (Ecclesiastes 11:8 NIV)

Enjoyment requires the intention to take pleasure in the moment. It means we pay attention to what is good right now, the way we slowly enjoy a way-too-expensive latte.

So I grab my list today and tell myself, Walk.

And so I bid you in this day:

Man zou.