The world is filled with delights

I recently finished reading the Book of Delights, by Ross Gay. As one would hope from a title like that, it was delightful. Gay, a poet, wrote one short essay a day for a year (with the occasional day off) about something that brought him joy.

The flight attendant who called him “honey.” The feeling of rubbing cocoa butter on his skin. The housefly landing on the porcelain handle of his coffee cup, “its wings hauling all the light in the room.” The memory of coming home to find his father watching the movie “Ghost,” weeping.

In undertaking this cataloguing of things that tickled him, Gay came to understand “that my delight grows—much like love and joy—when I share it.”

Here are some things that delight me:

As I’m walking my dog, the hummingbird that zips in front of us to drink from my neighbor’s flowers. Salt water slipping past my body as I swim in the ocean. The musty smell of the leather-bound novels I inherited from my grandparents. The waggle of my son’s butt as we perform our secret handshake during his bedtime ritual. Jeff Buckley’s plaintive exhale at the beginning of “Hallelujah.”

There is life in each of these things, the little moments that tune us into the world. As David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk who has studied gratitude extensively, says, “Joy is the happiness that does not depend on what happens. It is the grateful response to the opportunity that life offers you at this moment.”

What delights you?

How would your life be different if you took time today to notice what brings you joy in each moment?