Reflect

Author of The Book of Delights, Ross Gay describes his year of chronicling daily delights as looking for “evidence of our interdependence” and “how we can love each other better.” Among his delights: being a Black man high-fived by a young white woman in a coffee shop, finding something redemptive in bindweed, naming the “constant and subtle caretaking” that is almost always happening among us. Delight brings to mind the natural response of a child to something beautiful or playful, delicious or silly — an unmitigated declaration of sheer joy, unfettered by self-consciousness or judgment. Children are primed for delight because so much of the world is new to them; they don’t have to remember to see the magic all around. Delight, of course, is an experience available to all of us, regardless of age and even amidst the inevitable challenges and sorrows that are part of our lives. Ross Gay describes the way his yearlong practice resulted in a “delight radar” and that by chronicling delights, he felt his “life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight.”