alt Hacker NewsEnjoy Every Sandwich
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I've written it elsewhere but I'm going to write it again. Somehow, work to enjoy today as well as to save for tomorrow. If you wait for things, you might not be able to physically able to do what you want to do, or the people you want to do it with might not be there. If you don't save you might not have the resources.
Enjoy every sandwich is a nice, mildly flippant way of saying that one should enjoy every moment. You only get so many and you don't know how many that is. Jackson Browne's For A Dancer also addresses this.
And in the end, it's never enough.
This hits me like a brick wall with my young children. Seeing them change so rapidly is a glimpse into how short life is and how often an experience unknowingly becomes the last of its kind.
There is so much to be gained by slowing down, focusing on what you can be grateful for, and not striving for more.
I’ve been getting into photography recently. I enjoy capturing the beauty of light in everyday moments - you’d think I’d run out of things but after years in the same place, breathtaking moments are a daily occurrence (if I am looking).
On one of my walks, I had the realization that if I were blind and suddenly re-gained my vision, I would be overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to be able to see these things. And yet it is not natural for the sighted to feel overwhelmed with joy and gratitude every time they open their eyes.
I try to practice gratitude daily; at first it was difficult to come up with things, but my perspective has since broadened. I am deeply grateful that I can see the way light filters through haze in late September. I can hear beautiful music (an unlimited supply, of anything I want, at any time!). I can run (to think, I used to consider this a burden!). I could go on listing things for hours.
You can experience joy in the good things in your life before the loss. Enjoy every sandwich - even the soggy ones.
Top 10, unranked:
- Raging Bull or Brian Allen from Star Meats in Berkeley, CA
- Shaking Beef, Dinosaur Sandwiches in San Francisco / Daily City, CA
- Turkey Cranberry from the GBC in Berkeley, CA
- Lemongrass tofu from Lokal Sandwiches in Los Angeles, CA
- Pastrami on rye from Sarges Deli in NYC, NY
- Fried Chicken Sandwich from Bakesale Betty's in Berkeley, CA
- Dad's BLT or fried egg sandwiches
- Any sandwich from Mom paired with potato salad
- Wife's Cemita
- Turkey sandwich from "The Sandwich Shop", Dogpatch in San Francisco, CA
It hasn't been updated in a while, but sometimes I still get lost just watching rotating sandwiches and dreaming:
Here's the full interview referred in the article in case you're interested:
This is one of my favorite quotes and I'm glad to see it discussed here.
My favorite interpretation is focusing on the beauty of how even such a mundane thing as a sandwich is a unique experience. Someone made it by-hand, the ingredients have their own backstory in arriving in the present moment, and the taste is greater than the sum of its parts because of all the competing and complementary flavors.
Sandwiches hide in plain sight and even when they aren't great they are unique and will underscore how good your next great one is.
I had a similar epiphany watching S1E5 of Fargo.
"The winters are cold... but I can't complain. My socks have holes... but again, do I complain? I do not. The oldest needs braces... the youngest once sneezed for three days straight... but who could complain? They're gifts."
"Children?"
"All of it. The cold, the holes."
For all of the complaining we can do about our hardships, it's a gift to even be able to complain. When someone says, "Life is good", they're right even if you feel like things are shitty -- because life itself, being here and alive, to be able to feel and to think, is a wonderful gift.
> I find myself forgetting the point. The goal might not be to exactly enjoy every sandwich. Some sandwiches are just straight up trash. Maybe the goal is to notice that you’re eating one.
Taking Mr. Zevon's advice to "enjoy every sandwich" literally is amazing. I think he'd appreciate the absurdity of the post.
Ever since I did the "The Science of Well-Being" coursera course way back when, and got into mindfulness, I always try to saviour my daily sandwich! And also mix it up a bit (cutting it differently, using new ingredients). Both of these are tiny things in isolation but if you do stuff like this throughout the day it makes a measurable difference to happiness.
Another way to interpret the advice is not to buy the airport sandwich.
WTF, are most of the replies bots? The article isn't about sandwich and we have plenty of comments that have gone on talking about that...
Every ten minutes of worry becomes ten seconds of relief. Every tasteful delight is followed by three moments of gastric distress. Every fifteen second laugh is built on half an hour of stress/worry/trauma/hurt.
Enjoy every hedonic pleasure. But the balance sheet doesn’t look good even if you always do. It’s either all just a raw deal or we need to look beyond the low- and high-minded enjoyments.
Somewhat disappointed this is more boomer health-anxiety blogspam. It's not really about sandwiches.
I swear ever since Ozempic came out, there's been this huge marketing push from everyone and their dog for anything tangentially related.
Seems unintentionally ironic that most sandwiches are so unhealthy.
> The goal might not be to exactly enjoy every sandwich. Some sandwiches are just straight up trash. Maybe the goal is to notice that you’re eating one.
That's obvious. Who doesn't notice that? I think if I were terminally ill I'd seek things I enjoy, and savor them, and avoid bad sandwiches. In good health, I'd ask what made that sandwich bad and think about how to improve it.
No such thing as a bad sandwich. People are pretending not to like things.
There relevance of this vague piece to HN really escapes me
I was seven years old in 1969 during the moon landing, with the whole extended family gathered around the enormous TV console. It was a very memorable event for me, but the thing I most remember is that mom made me and my friend a simple BLT with mayo. For some reason it was like a visitation from Jesus for both of us. We spent the next few years making them or begging for them relentlessly. We thought it was our own thing. Over the next fifty years I've tried to recapture that, but never entirely succeeded in reaching the same culinary apogee. Still trying. Every BLT comes with free a flashback to that hot July day. And a remembrance of that best of friends who we lost twelve years ago.