One time my friend came over with a candy thermometer and we made homemade fudge. I remember eating a lot of it.
At one point my friend was telling me an anecdote, and while I was listening I was absentmindedly devouring a wallet-sized slab of fudge.
“Whoa, slow down!” she said. “You’re eating it like a sandwich!”
This happens to me with sweets sometimes. Some deep, primordial impulse is driving me to physically incorporate the food substance into my body as efficiently as possible, like an ancient jellyfish subsuming a paralyzed sardine.
This impulse conflicts with a more complex, more human capability, which is to consciously appreciate the experience of eating the thing. Why did we bother to make fudge anyway, rather than just eat handfuls of sugar right out of the bag? Well, because humans have this ability, should we choose to exercise it, to appreciate the experiences we have, rather than just seek things in accordance to instinct and habit. It might be one of the best things about us.
I can put on my housecoat just to get it onto my body, or I can appreciate the experience of putting it on — the weight of the material, the fleecy hem brushing against my calves, or whatever else about it presents itself to my sensibilities.
We all have this capacity, although it doesn’t usually happen automatically. Appreciating an experience intentionally takes a miniscule but non-zero amount of effort. It’s nearly always worthwhile, because it makes life fulfilling and largely okay as it is. It keeps your attention on what life is, rather than on mental mirages of what could be, should be, might be.
The fulfillment-increasing power of conscious appreciation is quite obvious when it comes to eating something delicious. Making a point of appreciating a piece of pie, or a steak, rather than violently scarfing it like one of your primordial-sea-dwelling ancestors, increases the fulfillment derived from it by an order of magnitude, or two. If you doubt this, try eating a steak as fast as you can, and watch the nearby humans lecture you on exactly this point.
To be clear, by “appreciate” I don’t mean “enjoy” exactly, although you might also enjoy the experience. I mean “recognizing the unique or worthy qualities” of the experience itself: the texture of it, the aesthetics of it, the heft of it, the heat of it, the poetry of it, the poignancy of it — whatever strikes your sensibilities when you pay attention to what’s happening.
I also don’t mean thinking about the experience. You appreciate something by feeling it, sensing it, tasting it, investigating it on an experiential level. You don’t have to think at all. Appreciating and thinking are like listening and talking; they generally don’t happen at the same time.
Appreciating an experience is fulfilling and life-affirming even if it isn’t the most preferable experience. A boxer might appreciate the strength and grace of his opponent; that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t prefer a weaker and clumsier one. You can appreciate the weight of the grocery bags you’re carrying from your car, the whiff of coming rain in the air, or the burn in your legs after climbing two flights of stairs, even if you don’t precisely enjoy those experiences. When you’re appreciating something, even something challenging, you really know you’re living.
Pleasant experiences are easiest to appreciate, of course. You can quite easily appreciate the experience of eating cubes of fudge, putting on a shirt right out of the dryer, or settling yourself into bed, if you think to do so. It’s still a voluntary act, though — if you don’t make a point of it, you might not appreciate even those things.
Once you see the magic of intentional appreciation, you can apply it to increasingly mundane and subtle experiences. You can appreciate the hardness of the floor you’re walking on, or the way your socks are hugging your feet right now, the way that leaf landed just like that, or the cinematic effect a distant church bell has on the moment. You can appreciate the sheer volume of cabbages in the bin at the supermarket, the cavernousness of the train station, or the dependable calmness of Russ the product manager. It’s all a matter of noticing that these qualities exist, in everything all the time, and that they have their own unique signature.
Without practicing active appreciation, you’re resigning yourself to passive appreciation, which makes it a much rarer thing. Exceptionally pleasant experiences do happen, and they often demand your appreciation: you’re moved by a blazing sunset, an exceptionally good waiter, or the arrival of a friend you love to bits.
But then you’re appreciating only the exceptional and favorable. You could be appreciating much of the other 99% of life too. Appreciating what happens as a general, ongoing practice, makes life much richer and more meaningful in a way that’s hard to express.
Why the appreciation habit makes such a difference becomes more obvious when you consider the alternative. If you’re not noticing the qualities of what’s currently happening, where is your attention? Invariably it’s on your idle thinking — an endless, reflexive mental mapping of hypothetical events, which most adults are nearly constantly preoccupied by.
Idle thinking always feels important, but it’s generally fruitless, repetitive, and unresolvable. It’s what the mind does when you don’t give it another job, like noticing what’s unfolding before you. It’s such a relief when you just drop the thinking in mid-blather, turn to what’s actually happening, and let yourself feel what’s impressive or notable about it.
Once you really get what I’m talking about, and you can genuinely appreciate the thunk of a car door closing, the stretch you feel when reaching a high shelf, or the solidity of a concrete stairwell, ordinary life feels like an endlessly interesting playground, or museum, or alien civilization, or something between the three.
Does appreciating upholstery and cabbage bins and Russ the product manager sound boring? That’s because you’re thinking about it, not doing it, and your thoughts are boring. Thoughts are tedious rehearsals of what’s not happening; appreciation is the real thing, real life, ever-new and inexhaustible.
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Photos by Freepik, Kari Shea, Daniel Jolivet, and Taylor Heery
