Delight

In reevaluating what I value in life, I keep coming back to how important I find the concept of delight.

“Delight” and “delectation” both come to us from the Latin word delectare meaning “to charm.”  So, there’s that important connotation of magic.  Delighted.  Charmed.  Enchanted.  Ensorceled.

Being delighted — and delighting others — makes my life worth living.

There are many things that are sources of delight for me.  A partial list of things that come to mind:

• children – like a baby’s laugh or a kid gasping at the eucatastrophe of a fairy tale
• nature – like snow starting to fall on the pine forest along the north rim of the Grand Canyon or the Waitomo glow worm cave in New Zealand
• sublime art – like the tragedies of William Shakespeare, the writing of Neil Gaiman, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, or the paintings of Mikhail Vrubel
• insight – like Stephen Johnson pointing out the idea of the “adjacent possible” or Jared Diamond slowly making his case in Guns, Germs, & Steel
• cleverness – like the comedy of Eddie Izzard, the stage production of Shockheaded Peter, the books of Patrick Rothfuss, the songs of The Flight of the Conchords, the best episodes of The Simpsons or Rick & Morty, the plays of Tom Stoppard, the films of Edgar Wright, or chatting with my smartest & funniest friends

At their most intense, I experience an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) or frisson from delightful things.  That feeling is quite literally the most enjoyable sensation I have ever known, but it is always fleeting, which makes it even more rare and precious.

Looking back on my life, almost everything — all the books, all the movies, all the concerts, all the travel, even all the conversations — has been chasing after delight.