Necessary Joy
How can I continue to embody the spirit of Italy’s Il Dolce Far Niente, the sweetness of doing nothing, and the spirit of joy that I found in particular practices in Italy? This is the question I’ve continued to let percolate. How to embody this here in my own West Virginia world?
The answer came as a reminder this week from an On Being podcast episode with poet, teacher, and gardener, Ross Gay.
First, the podcast. I first heard this episode when it aired in late July 2019. Just weeks before, one of my closest friends had died in a ridiculously fast and unexpected relapse of cancer. Her death came just weeks after my father-in-law died, also quickly and somewhat unexpectedly. And then, right before I heard Ross Gay speak to Krista Tippett, a third death in my world occurred—my beloved cat. It all was more than I felt able to hold.
I didn’t know who Ross Gay was then but I was looking for something to hold me as I walked my familiar circle at the local park. I turned to a podcast that had held me in the past. This was the day I first heard Gay speak about joy. I wasn’t quite ready to understand this then, but when I found his book The Book of Delights early summer 2022, I remembered and was ready to take it in.
Ross Gay understands that there are people who believe it can feel wrong to speak of joy in a world with so much suffering, so much division, so much that is broken. He says, “We are good at fighting, and not as good at holding in our imaginations what is to be adored and preserved and exalted — advocating for what we love, for what we find beautiful and necessary.”
The paradox is that we need joy and need to develop it as a muscle of resistance. The essence of this is, as he says, that “joy has nothing to do with ease. And joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die.”
This is the connecting force—we are all bound to the same end and we are all held in the same possibility for there to be more than a bitter plod toward that end. Gay says, “Joy is—for me, the moments when my alienation from people — but not just people, from the whole thing — it goes away, and it shrinks. If it was a visual thing, like, everything becomes luminous. And I love that mycelium, or forest metaphor, that there’s this thing connecting us. And among the things of that thing connecting us is that we that have this common experience; many common experiences, but a really foundational one is that we are not here forever. And that — that’s a joining, a joy-ning.”
He made it a muscle he could build when he decided to write down a delight every day for a year, starting and ending on his birthday in August. This catalog became his first book of delights and inspired me, when I discovered it, to start my own cataloging.
Noticing delight does inspire the experience of joy. This experience is one that is often held in the sensorial richness of life’s seemingly small moments: the sweetness of bi-color corn and local cherries straight from the Mennonite farm where the brightness of flowers and cheery faces greet me; the sight of an old VW bus with a giant smiley face decorating the front pulling up across from me at a four-way stop sign (along with the smiling owner of said bus when he saw me delightedly pointing the giant smile out to my 15 year-old son); the sound of children laughing as they spun in circles in the middle of a cloud of bubbles pouring out of a plastic bubble making machine amidst the music of a bluegrass band at a July 4th celebration.
For any of it to become a delight, to embed itself in me as joy, is dependent on me being willing to be present, without the hustle of distraction and noise, and to be filled by life’s sweetness. Making space for a kind of nothing that could be filled by a something rich with connection. Oh how we need this. A “joy-ning,” as Gay describes, is so necessary.
That July 4th moment I mentioned happened in a field in front of the set of schools I attended, elementary, middle and high. Those weren’t years I would describe exactly as joyful, and in fact, when I walked on those grounds I had to pause my brain from falling into anxious memory. Something lifted my eyes that night to the long back field that rose into a mountain range I’d seen through my whole youth, a cross country field I’d run hundreds of times, grounds I’d stood on for years. Yet, that night I saw it as if for the first time. “I never realized how beautiful these school grounds I grew up on are,” I said to my husband and an old childhood friend. I stood for a moment and watched the evening sun lighting those mountains and took in the land anew.
This, I think, is what pausing in the sweetness of nothing can help us do—connect with seeing our world and each other anew. Because it is true—we are all going to die. This existence is fleeting and ephemeral and there is so much beautiful that slips by too quickly and too often unnoticed.
That night, though, I lifted my eyes and then I slowed my breathing and I saw anew not only the land, but the lovely people I was with—my own small family, my mother and step-father, a friend I’ve known my whole life, and also a field of people who longed, I am sure, for celebration, for joy, of their own. And that was enough to draw me into a quiet and calm ease, in the middle of a place that also holds hard memories, which allowed me to hear joyful laughter and sweet local music, see sparkling bubbles and the sun setting over the mountains just before the sky filled with bursting color. There I was, in the middle of delight, not missing it as it passed into its own kind of death.
I am back in The Book of Delights and have gifted myself a copy of The Book of (More) Delights too. Ross Gay is, pardon the repetition and pun, delightful. His work has inspired me to start back into the daily writing of my own delight. I find this to be such an incredible practice for regulating my nervous system and engaging me in the practice of remembering life’s sweetness right here in my own daily life. And to remind me that if we don’t remember how beautiful it all is, what are we actually fighting for in this world anyway?
So, this is an invitation friends. First, to listen to Ross Gay speak about the insistence of joy here: On Being with Ross Gay or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Then, consider picking up his marvelous book of sweet and short essays. And finally, share your own delight—maybe record it for yourself daily, tell a friend, post it here in comments, share it on social media, or maybe we can start our own chat conversation of delights. That’s a retreat I think we could all use.
Speaking of retreat, today and tomorrow is the last days for the summer sale from True Nature Travels. Use this code to join me in Portugal for a truly delightful time in a stunning location!
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Instructions on how to use the promo code:
1. Go to https://truenaturetravels.com/retreats/portugal-christa-2025/
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4. Enter the code SUMMER200 in the Voucher/Coupon Code field near the bottom of the registration form (just above “Billing Information”). *note the code is only valid from July 1 - 8, 2024.