You guys: IT FINALLY HAPPENED.
After years of writing and talking about delight (and sharing delights with you all in our group delight chat), I had the delight and honor of speaking with the author of The Book of Delights, himself, Ross Gay.
“Delight is the pleasurable evidence of connection” —Ross Gay
“Delight is getting to talk about delight with Ross Gay” —Catherine Price
For anyone not familiar with Ross and his work, he’s a poet, essayist, teacher, and all around wonderful human being who is the bestselling author of books including The Book of Delights, The Book of (More) Delights, Inciting Joy, Be Holding, and The Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude. (If you’d like to buy them, please do so via that link, which will take you to his website; I’m quite sure Ross would prefer that we not get them through Amazon!)
I read The Book of Delights (for which Ross wrote an essay about something that delighted him every day for a year) during the first year of the pandemic, and it truly changed my life. Among many other things, it inspired me and my family to start a practice of noticing and sharing delights. For example, we have a “Delight Jar” on our dining room table (into which we drop slips of paper with daily delights), and in a meta-delight, my daughter, who is now nine, routinely points out her own delights to me (recent examples include a bright pink house, and a bumper sticker indicating how much someone loved their golden retriever). I was truly honored to get the chance to talk about delight with Ross himself.
One of the many things I loved about our conversation was its pace. I have a tendency to talk a mile a minute and often have a hard time leaving room for silence. Ross, on the other hand, has a much less hurried cadence. He took the time to actually think about everything I asked him and to reflect on his answers in a way that made me feel like we were exploring words and concepts together—which not only was deeply enjoyable, but struck me as remarkable, because I’m sure Ross has given interviews about delight hundreds of times by now, and could easily have given me pat responses. I found myself responding to his pace by slowing down myself, and thinking about the concepts we were discussing — delight, love, connection — as if for the first time. It felt good. And it inspired me to try to hurry less, both in my speech and in my life.
(Note: as anyone who’s spoken to me recently can attest, I’m failing. But a girl can have dreams.)
I also loved Ross’s definition of “delight.” It’s a word I often have trouble pinning down (it seems like one of those things where “you know it when you feel it”). But Ross proposed the idea that delight is, at least in part, the “pleasurable evidence of connection” (and, also, the pleasurable evidence of life and love).
I love that—because I think it’s true. Whether our delights are the result of sensory beauty (flowers in a window box, the morning light cutting across my kitchen floor, the taste of a perfectly ripe June strawberry), absurdity (the sight of a man playing a trumpet while riding a unicycle down one of Philadelphia’s busiest thoroughfares), or shared experiences (public high-fives between strangers, laughing together in a darkened movie theater), when we notice something that delights us, isn’t it usually a reminder that we are connected, to other humans, to other living creatures, and to life itself? And—going back to the theme of this newsletter itself—isn’t our ability to notice and experience delight therefore a reminder that we are alive? (And isn’t the fact of our alive-ness pleasuable evidence of our capacity to give and receive love?)
I don’t know about your mental state at the moment, but given everything going on in the world right now, domestically and abroad, it seems urgent that we actively remind ourselves of the things that connect us, instead of endlessly focusing on what drives us apart. And I believe that if we open ourselves to receiving delight, we will be inspired to create more delights, to provide other people and creatures with pleasurable evidence of connection, life and love. It’s a positive cycle that, on a grand scale, could truly make a difference.
As just one example of how my conversation with Ross affected my own attitude toward hardships, at some point during the conversation, an alarm went off on my insulin pump (I have type 1 diabetes), and I apologized for the interruption. (You might be able to hear it in the background in the recording.) Instead of just saying, “That’s okay,” or “Don’t worry,” Ross’s response was to point out that my pump itself was “a miracle.”
I’d never thought of it in that way. (I usually think of my pump—which is a small machine that delivers insulin to me under my skin, and which I have to keep connected to me at all times—as an essential annoyance.) But as I reflected on it, I realized he was right: it is a miracle. Perhaps not a delight, per se, but worthy of my awe and gratitude nonetheless: were it not for this machine or, more specifically, the insulin it contains, I would have died when I was 22 years old.
I should also note that I teared up multiple times during this conversation.
I could go on, but I want you to listen for yourself. Choose an unhurried time—or a time when you would like to be unhurried—and enjoy.
If it inspires you to notice delights of your own, I’d love to hear them, either in the comments or in our group delight chat).
Also, Ross brought up a number of other authors and books he loves, which I’m including links to below.
To scrolling less, living more, and recognizing and honoring delight,
Resources:
His books, which include but are not limited to: The Book of Delights, The Book of (More) Delights, Inciting Joy, Be Holding, and The Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude
Books Ross mentioned that he thinks we should check out:
Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just
Bernadette Mayer, Midwinter Day
Lewis Hyde: The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World
Robin Wall Kimmerer - Ross describes her as “one of the most beautiful articulators of gratitude.”
The Fig Tree:
In one of his poetry collections, The Book of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross mentions a fig tree growing on the corner of 9th and Christian street in Philadelphia. I am at the corner of 9th and Christian A LOT because it’s close to the studio where I take music classes, and I have been searching for this fig tree for years. Ross clarified that it’s actually at the corner of Christian and S. Hutchinson Street, and dear reader, I think I have found it. Add it to my list of delights for the day!
A Delightful Conversation with Ross Gay