Remember how in the film American Beauty the young boy appreciates the beauty of an ordinary plastic bag blowing in the wind? He had what Bertrand Russell, author of The Conquest of Happiness, calls “the habit of zest.”
People who cultivate the habit of zest are those who regularly take a lively interest in the most mundane of everyday moments and see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Nobel Prize winner and scientist Daniel Kahneman says we experience about 20,000 individual moments in a day, each “moment” lasting only a few seconds.
In my layman opinion, whenever you retain a memory, it’s because you were appreciating that single moment in time—and were able to freeze-frame it. And…I also believe the more memories you have, the more you are “living in the NOW.” And the fewer memories you have, the more you are fast-forwarding through life.
Bounce Back Assignment:
Cultivate the habit of zest. Purposefully seek out the beauty in the seemingly trivial. Walt Whitman saw a world of beauty “in a leaf of grass.” Notice the colors and shapes of the foods you eat. The shadows a vase makes on the table. The interesting faces of the people on the bus with you. Not only will you experience a richer present, but a month from now you will be able to look back and have more happy memories to appreciate.
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