Delight in Moments of Joy
Photo by Kwang Mathurosemontri on Unsplash
“A joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration, and faith.”
~ Brené Brown
This week we’re back at our daughter’s house, helping out with their toddler and new baby.
Babies are endlessly amusing, and as you probably know, they often get attached to random items. Baby Girl has fallen in love with a stocking hanging on the wall. It’s a leftover Christmas decoration in nontraditional colors—purple, orange, and white—with the word “Peace” on it. No matter how upset she gets, if we put her on the changing table beside “her” stocking, and swing it back and forth on its hook, she settles right down. Her fascination with it cracks us up.
Our daughter makes me laugh even harder when she tells her, “You do you, Baby Girl.” Positive affirmations can’t start too early, right?
Each of us has similar, quirky things that simply make us happy.
Who’s to say why any particular thing gives us pleasure? Like micro greens on a dish at a fancy restaurant, something catches our eye, and fill us with momentary delight.
For me, last week, it was single bloom on our pink dogwood in our backyard. The first tree we planted died, and we’ve been nursing its replacement along for several years. Last year it surprised us with two gorgeous blooms. No matter what we do, though, we cannot seem to coax the entire tree to blossom. The irony is that the dogwood is our state flower! (It’s a flowering tree, so it’s both a tree and a flower, as explained in this funny scene you might remember from the film An American President.)
The trees are flowering everywhere in my town, except in my backyard, apparently. Rather than get frustrated, I’ve decided to have a glass-half-full attitude about it. I adore those one or two blooms when I see them, even if they only grace our tree for a week or so. Tara Brach explains this idea in her recent post in Maria Shriver’s Sunday Pages: The Buddhist concept of Happy for No Reason "doesn’t depend on what is happening in our life, but rather is the freedom of our heart when we are unconditionally present.”
For all the times we are present enough to take note of something that gives us a moment of pleasure, how many more do we miss?
Many of us live life in the fast lane, and are going so many different directions at once that it’s all a blur. We don’t take the time to see what’s right in front of us.
Or we hyper-focus on our greatest need at the current moment. Whether it’s physical or emotional, we put all our energy into acquiring the one thing we feel we’re lacking. But as soon as we get it, we start worrying about the next thing on our list.
Either way, we miss out on all kinds of opportunities for enjoyment, or “units of momentary happiness” as this blogger refers to them.
But we can train ourselves to fight that tendency and begin to search out all the opportunities for bliss that appear before us each day, however small.
In fact, science shows that the practice of paying attention to the good things in our lives, even for a brief period of time, can actually make us feel happier months later!
Like the process of acquiring any new skill, we have to make a conscious effort to do it, though.
I’ve mentioned before the benefits of keeping a gratitude journal. It appears that the act of both noticing things to be grateful for and recording them makes them stick with us. And there are so many chances for delight in if we just stop and look around us.
Once in a while the source of our delight comes as an offering from another person. It might be a brief encounter, but the memory of it can last a lifetime. My sister recalls a time when a neighbor approached her to offer “the last rose of the season” from his garden. Whenever she thinks of him, she remembers both the moment and the joy she felt.
“The truly noteworthy events in our lives are often the least momentous, yet the most wonderful. When we cherish such occurrences, we condition ourselves to take note of them when they happen and appreciate the value they add to our lives,” says the Daily OM in a post about Magical Moments, which coincidentally just appeared in my inbox today.
One avenue to happiness is through the accumulation of momentary joys.
The way to create more of it is to ask ourselves what special-to-us items or activities make us smile. And then to do more of them.
Here’s a list of 75 sweet and simple pleasures to get you started.
What’s on your list?
Affectionately,
Elaine