I have a million things to do at home (ok not a million… more like 20) but I was getting hungry and looking outside at the cold but sunny Fall day, I thought “Pho would be really good for lunch”. So I quickly rearranged my to-do list and got into my car and came to my favourite “hot soup on a cold day” place. I drove 25 minutes to come here; believe me, it’s worth the gas. It’s a tiny Pho restaurant (Pho – pronounced “Fah” – is a vietnamese rice noodle soup) in my city’s tiny chinatown. I have been coming here for the last 12 years and it is the only place I ever feel comfortable going to eat by myself. Other restaurants in the area have “modernized” over the years (and have increased their prices to match), but this little place hasn’t changed a bit… and that’s one of the things I love most about it.
I enter and am greeted by an older gentleman, whom I suspect owns the place and barely speaks any english, and who also has one of most joyful smiles I’ve ever seen. I communicate with single words, hand signals and my smile. I don’t need to say anything anyway. I know what I’m getting because I always get the same thing. The only question is whether I’m going to have 2 of their amazing spring rolls, or 4. I’ve been ordering them for so long I can’t even remember what’s in them, but they’re delicious.
I am presented with a glass of green tea while I wait for my order, which doesn’t take long. For a Saturday at lunch time, the place is surprisingly quiet. I like it better that way. The tea is amazing as always. I’ve never been able to make green tea like this at home. It has been steeped for exactly the right amount of time so it doesn’t taste bitter. And it tastes like flowers. Seriously!
The older man comes to my table, bringing me my bowl of hot soup and a dish with my spring rolls, and I smile at him warmly, expressing my gratitude without words. I add just the right amount of hoisin sauce, then a quick squirt of Sriracha sauce, and finally the trimmings: fresh thai basil leaves, a quarter of lime, another type of fresh herb that I don’t know the name of, and a heaping pile of bean sprouts. I put everything in, mix it up, and take my first sip of broth.
Perfection.
The Sriracha sauce makes my eyes water at first, but the flavour is just heavenly. I continue taking slow bites and sips, allowing myself to savour every flavour. I eat so slowly that customers come, eat and go. I don’t look at the time.
I’ll get to my to-do list in a little bit, and yeah, I probably won’t get all of it done. But the older I get, the more I’ve come to realize that we need to give ourselves time to stop and enjoy the simple things that make us happy. And it shouldn’t just be something that we’ve added to our schedule like a reward after we’ve gotten all our chores done, or worse, something we only do once a week. I actually think that taking time to do something that makes us happy should be something we do FIRST in our day, to feed our soul and energize us to face whatever we’ve got planned for the day. And that we should do this every day. Maybe not the same thing every day, but even if it’s just giving ourselves 10 minutes to have a few quiet sips of coffee while we look outside and appreciate the beauty of nature. That’s all it takes.
Taking time to put the phone down and really SEEING our surroundings and appreciating them, is such an important part of deliberately choosing our own happiness. And it doesn’t cost anything. All we have to do is open our eyes.