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TwitThis"Enjoy Every Sandwich"
Few defining moments are as dramatic as the prospect of facing one's own death. Psychologist Charles Zanor, 59, learned this in February 2002 when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. While enduring exhausting rounds of chemotherapy, he came to see it was only the "here and now" that came into sharp focus. "Everything else was only a hope," he says.
Rather than consider extravagant gestures in the face of death -- feats of physical courage, elaborate trips -- he began to realize it was the minutiae of life he wanted to enjoy and celebrate. The person who summed this up best for him was singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, he says. In 2002 Zevon had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and was given only a short time to live. David Letterman, a close friend of the performer's, paid him special tribute by featuring him as the lone guest for an entire show.
Letterman asked Zevon if his fatal illness brought any wisdom. Zevon replied, "Enjoy every sandwich."
That, Zanor says, is now the essence of living for him too. In a "My Turn" column he wrote for Newsweek, he says his life has become sprinkled with Zen rushes, which he describes as "an arresting sense of tranquility coupled with the heightened awareness that what I'm doing at that moment is exactly what I want to be doing -- whether I'm reading a book in bed, cooking a meal or watching a movie with my wife." Zanor jokes that he no longer tries to "put 14 eggs in a 12-egg carton."
Where once he took only one-week vacations because he thought he couldn't get away, now he takes two. He's no longer trying to cheat time. Instead, he's enjoying it as it unfolds, for as long as it does.
Truly connecting to flashes of life as they fly by is something we all can do -- sometimes with a little help. David Anderson, the Episcopal priest, found this out while on vacation in a remote part of Maine last summer. He had packed his cell phone for the trip. "I couldn't not take it," he explains. The day he arrived, he strolled down to the shore, taking in the sweep and majesty of the Atlantic.
Reflexively, he pulled out his phone to check for messages. Fortunately, a higher power seemed to intervene. "The screen blessedly read 'No Service,' "Anderson recalls. He smiled and put the phone back in his pocket.
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