Smell the Fries
“Appreciation of the depths of a beauty is a condition of our physical, mental, and spiritual health- and of our physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual maturity,”- Makoto Fujimura.
I have to re-read the above quote slowly because it holds a bag worth of gold in terms of wisdom.
What are your favorite experiences in life?
Here are a handful of mine:
Hearing my children playing video games together.
McDonald's French Fries, hot and salted right out of the fryer.
Seeing my wife enjoy a new experience at a good restaurant.
A walk after the rain, seeing everything in a deeper shade of green.
When a lightning bolt of inspiration hits me mid-paragraph while reading a book.
The moment a scene from a Pixar movie makes me tear up.
Bike riding across Edmonton’s High Level bridge on a bright sunny day.
The first half of the second, when I wake up in a hotel room in a new city and ask myself, “woah, where am I ?”
Driving through the city late at night with FM radio playing through the speakers.
Writing while I’m feeling most inspired.
I can’t enjoy any of these if I’m not healthy. Nor can I enjoy them fully if I’m not becoming a more mature person. If I couldn’t enjoy those experiences, it could mean that I was too distracted to appreciate them.
The ability to enjoy all the experiences mentioned is directly tied to my overall health in the moment. Humans have been fine-tuned to enjoy them in order to thrive. Something inside me must be off if the potency of these experiences goes unappreciated. A lack of balance and perspective will blur the best opportunities to enjoy life. Someone who can’t notice the awesomeness of a McDonald's French Fry has a mind that’s overwhelmed by something else, or has had way too many fries and has been desensitized by too much of a good thing. A healthy person orders a medium fries instead of the large ones. A mature person is likely to appreciate the French fry because they took a split second to notice it took over a dozen people working hard at the store to deliver your bag at the drive-through.
This is not a call to stop and smell the roses…or the fries; this is about having an early warning sign to support my health and growth. The message for all of us is to take ownership of our health and growth. Listen to your doctor, exercise, pray, see a therapist, and eat good food. But also take ownership of your growth and development. If we continue to grow in wisdom, we tend to revisit life’s basics with joy. Unless, of course, your doctor tells you that you can’t eat French fries. In which case, I got nothing for you.
You need this energy to do what you’ve been created to do! Stay healthy and keep moving forward.
Thanks for reading, friend. I hope this helped you today.
-Jordan