Enjoy Every Sandwich

By Alex Greenwood
An acquaintance I met through business passed away recently. She was too young, I’d say, to have to battle and eventually succumb to cancer. I won’t get maudlin and assume things about someone I barely knew, but I will echo the words of the late, great Warren Zevon (I recommend this for newbies: Genius: Best of Warren Zevon).
Asked by David Letterman about how he was holding up after his diagnosis of lung cancer, he more or less said “Enjoy every sandwich.” (Comes in around 7:50 mark)

Makes good sense to me.
Some of us are here for a relatively long time–eighty, ninety or even a hundred years. Many never see thirty. But while you’re here, hanging on to this pale blue dot in the cosmos, try to delight in all it offers: the warmth of sun on your face, spectacular vistas offered by mountaintops, the rustle of wheat blowing on the plains, the primordial pull of the oceans.
Normal, even mundane-seeming contact with our friends and loved ones is most important: the sublime moment of a cocktail on the deck with a neighbor, a squeeze of your spouse’s hand, a joke amongst friends or your daughter’s smile when you pick her up from daycare.
And sandwiches. Damn, Warren, you were right. For me, it’s chicken salad–with no damn grapes in it.