My friend Colleen's 50th birthday is coming up this week so we went on a run on Saturday morning to celebrate. I wore my gold sparkly 50 earrings and my birthday runner tank top (of which I get a surprisingly good amount of use with birthday runs with friends through the year), and I gave her a sash to wear for the run.
At one point, we were running across the University Bridge, and another runner was running towards us. I saw her eyes first focus on Colleen's birthday sash and then look at my tank top with the arrow taped on, and a smile broke across her face as she ran past us.
It was such a small interaction, but such a sweet moment of delight. Ross Gay wrote a book of essays called Inciting Joy during the pandemic and just came out with another book called The Book of Delights. One review says this about the most recent book:
"The Book of Delights is about how everyone lives on a knife edge between life and death, beauty and horror. The book spans the course of a year, from one birthday to the next, with Gay recounting in what he calls 'essayettes' his everyday observations and experiences, joys and sorrows. Discussing everything from gardening to race relations, the book’s underlying premise is that connecting with others—particularly in a world rife with division—is central to living a full and happy life.
This practice of writing the essays for the volume is both meditative and interactive, and it leads him down crisscrossing paths shaped by his deep sense of empathy. These are essays about care and concern, and though on the surface they focus on the specific and idiosyncratic details of his daily life, they ultimately aim for a kind of universality, the hidden network of roots and mycelium that holds a culture’s forest together."
Ross Gay defines joy as connection, and this little moment on the bridge put a little more spring into my steps for the day....
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