The Forgotten Pleasure

Today I walked in the cold sunshine to the cafeteria. I hand picked each lettuce leaf, each cherry tomato, each cucumber. I gazed at the basket of hard boiled eggs until I found just the right one. Then I moved to the grilled chicken and picked 5 juicy slivers. Adding the crunchy croutons and slathering the whole selection with spicy italian dressing was the finishing point. I grabbed my favorite diet raspberry snapple from the cooler and slowly walked back through the sun and the cold to my office.

At my desk I ignored the blinking message light on the phone, the blinking instant message notification on my screen, and noted with disinterest the 22 emails that had arrived in the 15 minutes I had been away. I reached into the bottom of my bag and found the novel I've been reading at the pace of about 2 chapters a week and opened it.

It's Friday and both of my cubicle neighbors are out today, many of the staff have gone out to lunch and the only sound is the hum of ventilation and computer...the sound of energy sizzling in the air. The sound you rarely notice until it's not there.

As I make my way through a few more pages in the book I suddenly realize how quiet it is and how peaceful this one little moment feels. It is fleeting, the phone soon rings, people return from lunch, the pressure of a task that must be done intrudes. But for that a brief blink of time I re-discovered a forgotten pleasure.

One quiet stolen moment, and the awareness to appreciate it as a gift.