Savoring Paper
Today, I savored the moment of actually lying in bed on a Monday morning around noon for a few hours. Thankfully I did not have to get up every 10 minutes to use the bathroom. I chose to choose this moment because of the terrible weekend I had and my experience with the stomach flu. Also, I chose this moment because the atmosphere was nice, warm, and quiet. There weren’t any distractions; just repetitive background sounds which I took into memory. It was a brief moment of absolute relaxation and great relief. I can hear my housemate's music humming in the background upstairs. I hear birds chirping outside my window. I see rays of sunlight streaming through the blinds, highlighting my room. The shriek of a lawnmower of the gardeners going through their weekly routine of cutting the grass and trimming the hedges. I could finally focus my breathing and how good it felt to take in long deep breathes, yawning, and just plainly relaxing on my bed. My stomach wasn't rumbling and grumbling. Although I was kind of gassy, it seemed trivial compared to the violently uncontrolled bowel movements I had earlier that weekend. I decided to take the day off just to relax and take time off to enjoy the feeling of finally feeling better after being sick.
I would like to mention that during this moment I almost caught myself dampening the moment. In my head I was like, “Oh everyone feels relieved after being sick.” But, I decided to look past that to just appreciate the moment.
Now, whether this experience I felt while savoring was purely hedonic or eudaimonic? Honestly, it felt like a combination of both. I feel like my experience was hedonic in the sense that I felt relieved from the avoidance of pain and less pleasurable experiences. I also feel like it was partly eudaimonic in the sense that I was