Warren Zevon was dying when he sat down with David Letterman for the last time in 2002. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer just months before. Letterman, visibly moved, asked him if facing death had given him any special wisdom to share. What Zevon said was simple. He said he had always enjoyed himself, but that the enjoyment was more valuable now. He said you are reminded to enjoy every sandwich, every minute of playing with the band, being with the kids, all of it. Not a grand pronouncement. Not a theory of life. Just a reminder to actually be present for the good things while they are in front of you, because one day they won’t be.
Most of us, in business and in life, are remarkably bad at this. We close a deal and immediately move to the next one. We finish a hard project, exhale for about forty-five seconds, and open the next email. We hit a milestone and treat it as nothing more than a checkpoint on the way to somewhere else. We have conditioned ourselves to treat achievement as a transaction and celebration as an indulgence, when in fact it is the opposite. Pausing to mark a win, to look around at the people who made it possible and actually say something real to them, is not a distraction from the work – it’s the point of the work.
The best professionals I know understand that the small moments are not the gaps between the important ones. They are the important ones. The lunch where you laugh until your sides hurt. The Friday afternoon where the whole team sits together and just talks for a while. The client who calls just to say thank you. These moments are what make a career worth having. They are also what keep good people around you. People stay in relationships where they don’t feel invisible. They stay where they feel seen and valued.
Zevon’s insight wasn’t about mortality, even though that was the context. It was about attention. It was a reminder that enjoyment is a practice, not something that happens automatically when conditions are good enough. You have to choose to be present for it. You have to put down the phone, close the laptop, look at the person across from you, and let yourself feel the fact that something good is happening right now. Build that into how you work. Celebrate deliberately. Acknowledge the people around you with the same energy you bring to solving problems. So, the next time there is a reason to celebrate, don’t save it for later, eat the sandwich.
As always, this post and others can be found on my blog, Business Law Guy.