“We forget to advocate for what we love, for what we find beautiful and necessary. We are good at fighting. But imagining and holding in one’s imagination what is wonderful and to be adored and preserved and exalted is harder for us, it seems.”
Question to Live
Do I have a delight radar? |
Integration Step
Set out to actively cultivate joy in the most granular of experiences. What is pleasant and sweet and tender? What brings flashes of light into your day? |
Heart of the Matter
There’s a question loose in our hurting world: is it possible, is it a privilege, to be joyful in a time like this? But joy is a resilience-making, lifegiving birthright of being human. To suggest that you can’t be joyful in a time like this is akin to the idea that you can’t be hopeful unless everything has gone right for you. In his Book of Delights, Ross Gay took it upon himself to move through a year looking for delight and writing about delight every day. “One of the things that surprised me,” he says, “was how quickly the study of delight made delight more evident.” It’s precisely the closeness and ordinariness of what Ross attends to that makes him a teacher to us. |