My Responsibility to Delight
I’ve been hearing this refrain a lot lately: “If _____ gets elected president, we’re in big trouble.” Perhaps you’ve said this. Perhaps I have too. And while it speaks to a certain brokenness in this world and of a fear for an imagined future, I think it also speaks to a longing for something beautiful.
Sophisticated as our brains are, we have a rather primitive part of us that leans toward a negativity bias. We are more likely to pay attention, to remember, and to imagine our way into the negative and fearful. And as we pay attention to what is actually negative and what we imagine will be, our nervous system and sensory perception responds to both-- the real and the imagined --in the exact same way, as if they’re happening in real time. Often, then, before we can discern a wise response, our nervous system has reacted by telling us to engage and fight, or to armor and shut down, or to hide and numb ourselves. So then, I wonder, what is this doing to the whole of our existence and to our younger generations?
Ross Gay, one of my favorite poets and author of two collections of essayettes The Book of Delights and The Book of (More) Delights, says, “I often think the gap in our speaking about and for justice, or working for justice, is that 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.”