Inspired by Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, I’ve kept a Daily Delights journal for the last two years. I wanted to do something different than being grateful at the end of the day. I wanted to note what made me smile or giggle, what lightened my heart, what delighted me. Each day gets one line. I write at least one delight, sometimes two or three. Some are obvious delights: owl on fence, walk in snow, massage. Others not so obvious: write (a struggle), started therapy, garden for hours. I keep the Daily Delights journal on my nightstand; it’s the first thing I do when I get in bed. When I travel, I write the delights on a notepad and tape the page into the journal afterwards. I’m delighted by my consistency in keeping this journal. There is room for another sixteen or so years in this leather-bound book.
As for my regular journal, which is a Word document on my computer, I write there irregularly and usually when life is hard, sad, depressing. So much so, I’ve added a note at the beginning.
Note: I realize that when I feel shitty I write in my journal but when I’m fine I don’t write about that. Someone reading my journal would get a very unbalanced view of me, and my life. The goodness in my life, my happiness, fulfillment and the pleasure my loved ones bring make up the majority of my moments, days, weeks, months and years—I’m too busy enjoying them to write about them.
Who is this note for? Who will have the ability to access my computer? Most likely my spouse or my sons, the people I most care about, the people I’m most concerned about taking the contents of my journal out of context. I have a friend who has written in the front of her journal something to the effect of: Please don’t read this. Just throw it away.
I get that. Yes, throw it away. Delete the file. But as a writer—it’s all material! And as a writer struggling to piece together the story of my Armenian family’s survival during the Armenian Genocide—there could be clues in there! Answers to pressing questions!
I don’t know that my family would have a desire to know things about my life that would make my journal a treasured find. I don’t know that they would find delight in reading my regular journal. But perhaps when I have passed, the leather-bound journal of delights will still be on my nightstand, something to skim through, to seek glimpses of what they know would delight me, to learn the depth and breadth of my other delights.
Since November, another emotion I’ve focused on is joy. I’ve focused on joy to protect my mental and emotional health, and to protect my heart. (The procedure I had in October appears to have remedied my AFib or at least put it in remission.)
Joy for me is embodied—within me. I pause. I am alive. It is good to be alive. I smile. My muscles relax. I feel lighter. I call this joy. Joy is an intentional practice. Joy is a decision. Joy is not the future-facing hope seeking better days. Joy is now, a sustaining sense of well-being. Joy is a resource to be drawn on. Joy is an internal state that can turn outward, as in I strive to move joyfully through my days.
Delight and joy may be synonyms, but for me, in this time, they operate differently. Delights find me; I manifest joy. Delights are momentary; joy can linger. Delights are more surface; joy is soul-felt, perhaps even soul-sourced.
Maybe joy is the wrong word but that is the word I’ve been telling myself: I will be joyful. Joy is a choice. A choice that no one can take away from me. Joy helps me feel that my life is worth living. Joy keeps my heart beating in rhythm. I want joy within myself so I can send some of that joy out into the world.
This feeling I’m trying to describe is not an exuberant joy. Not joy all the time. I acknowledge the anguish and outrage that arises with each new reminder of the deep harm being done to many people, to groups of people, to this planet. But I don’t let those emotions consume me. To strive to embody joy is to be joyful in spite of, and even alongside, the outrage and the anguish.
There are days coming when conjuring joy will be a struggle, when despair will overwhelm my determination. I will depend upon the small moments. I will catalogue my delights. The brown creeper bobbing on the cedar trunk. The cat curled and purring on my chest. The full moon throwing shadows on the snow.
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