The mindfulness of the well wrapped sandwich

Lunch. It's usually the most rushed meal and we often don't show it enough love - whether you throw a couple if bits of bread and sliced something together or just grab some change and hope for the best it's often done in hurry.

I usually eat lunch at my desk and my desk is in my house so I can, if I remember, eat lunch on a proper plate with cutlery and a decent cup of tea. But mostly, I don't.

My rushed work lunches are a testament to refuelling and I want that to stop. I want to eat like I care about myself. I want to eat like I care about food.

I had lunch with a friend yesterday, we sat in a park that was colder than I really like it and I watched get her lunch out - she'd brought sandwiches and snacks in some of the wraps I'd given her and I was going to say something like "awe, you've still got them!" and make flattered noises when I noticed what she was doing.

She got all of the pieces of her lunch out, spread them on the rug and then unwrapped them one by one. She stopped talking while she unsealed the wraps and then set each of them out in front of her. It was meditative. It was quiet and honestly, kind of beautiful.

It reminded me of something I'd read about zen master Thich Nhat Hanh's 'orange' meditation (I absolutely had to look the spelling of his name up) - where you savour each segment of an orange with absolute attention in order to experience each piece as it really is.

I made some kind of joke about her 'sandwich ceremony' and she said she looked forward to doing it - just taking a moment to stop and be, to think about her food rather than just shovelling it in. I was going to say something back but I had a mouthful of cold pasta and it didn't seem appropriate.

Later on I thought about the way she must have prepared her lunch too - taking time to wrap and pack each thing. There was a lot of love in that lunch!

So I'm going to stop for lunch tomorrow. As often as I can I'm going to put whatever it is on a plate and I'm going to eat it away from my desk. I want my day to have that little moment of calm in it too - my own oasis of sandwich based zen.