69 Chapter 8 – Mindfulness and Savoring You only have moments to live. Jon Kabat-Zinn Mindfulness as a concept is a much bigger issue than the savoring of food. So to convey the fullness of this issue I will have to briefly step back from food and weight loss into the junction of psychotherapy and eastern philosophy. Please bear with me. Zen Buddhism pivots around mindfulness – also known as‘ meditating daily life’. Mindfulness is all about paying maximum attention, with all our senses, to the experience of the moment we are currently in. The saying,‘ You only have moments to live’, confronts the idea that we live our life moment by moment – life happens in the present moment. If we are not present in the moment, not thinking about attending fully to the moment, then we are not really living our life. Life happens in the present moment. If our mind is somewhere else, ruminating over the past or worrying about the future, our brain may as well be in a box somewhere. It has no need of a mobile body that can move it through the world and can put it in front of what can be a beautiful world with some beautiful people in it. This is no more important than when it comes to spending time with the people we really care about. I see one of life’ s tragedies as not being fully present when we are in the company of people we love. If we are not present with the people we love we are not experiencing a relationship. If we are not experiencing relationships with people, I am not sure what the point of life is. I believe there is nothing to life but relationships. Take away the relationships and you are left with a world of cold concrete and glass buildings surrounded by metal and plastic cars.