How Delightful.

Not this again.

I could hear them fussing from the kitchen, locked in an eternal battle between siblings that every parent has come to know and loathe. Leave me alone! You started it.

By now these are just white noise. My wife has actually gotten really good at blocking it out. I sometimes watch her with wonder and amazement (for so many reasons), but for this one in particular. Meanwhile, I just can’t seem to tune it out.

The sound of children playing and laughter? It’s only a delight if it’s happening outside my house. If I hear it upstairs, usually followed by loud noises of furniture crashing then I’m on high alert. (Note: my concern is not for the children. It’s for my things. This is why we can’t have nice things, they say.) And kids whining in the morning? That’s just a Tuesday, it’s our pre-school ritual. I don’t want to get up. Oatmeal again? She won’t stop looking at me.

Which is why on this morning I did what I usually do when the background noise got to be too much: I put on my headphones and started listening to Major’s Even More to drown them out. I gotta protect my peace somehow right?

I’ve been reading Kate Bowler’s book, Joyful Anyway and it’s been quite frankly, a delight. Like most of her witty and reflective takes on the absurdity of life, this book has found me at quite the interesting time. We’re smack in the middle of Maycember, that dreaded time where if feels like everything is happening everywhere all at once. We’ve got graduations and holidays and birthdays and anniversaries. Sometimes on the same days.

Just this past weekend we celebrated two of our daughters moving up, one to middle school and another to high school. The other two are progressing, but at milestones with less fanfare. I wrote in my journal that day:

I find myself looking back and looking forward on days like this. On the one hand, it feels like just yesterday that we were joining this community of entrepreneurial families and look at us now. We’ve really built something cool here. On the other hand, I’m so excited about what we’re building on multiple fronts, that it’s sometimes hard to stop myself from rushing ahead.

Afterwards, we went out to eat with extended family to mark the occasion. And it dawned on me: we only have so many of these left. Moments that have sometimes felt routine, but are really fleeting. I resolved right then and there to soak it all up.

Which brings me back to the idea of joy.

The most surprising thing Kate Bowler argues is that joy can’t actually be manufactured. And in our modern age, that’s almost offensive. We’re used to being in control and we gravitate toward solutions that promise Five Steps to Happiness or a quick fix for whatever’s bothering us.

But if you’ve lived long enough, you know that just like success isn’t linear, neither is joy. You’ll have you highs and lows. And sometimes, even weirdly punctuated in between are moments of joy. Kate argues that joy is uncontrollable. It’s like a surprise. You can’t get used to joy because you can’t get used to a surprise. And at the center of joy is delight, something she (by way of Father Ron) frames as the spontaneous response to the goodness and beauty of life.

Naturally as a planner this news is devastating. But, I have a plan (see what I did there?)

I’ve been an observer of kids for a while, first as a teacher and later as a parent, and and I think they’ve got more figured out than we give them credit for. Young kids, toddlers, babies, everyone up until the age when the world says… stop that, it’s time to grow up, knows how to access joy. Because they don’t put up barriers against it. They just follow love or curiosity where it leads them, and usually it leads to delight. They know how to make themselves available to joy.

That’s what I want more of.

So after I herded the kids into the van and made the hour roundtrip ride of drop offs for school, I arrived back at my office to start the day. But not before I asked myself, what would bring me delight this morning?

I know what I have to do. My full focus planner has a nice list of my Big 3 and all the follow ups awaiting me for work. And it’s true, joy might find me there in those activities (work certainly has been a space for joy in my life before). But it’s also true that paying attention to this moment right now just might be pregnant enough with the possibilities for joy, before I rush off to the next one.

This is when I notice once again how nice it is when the light shines into my office, and how comfortable it is to sit and read by the window in the morning. Or how calming it is that my dog Coco is sitting peacefully under my desk, both of us settled into our morning routines.

All delights, sitting right in front of me. I see you joy, hiding in plain sight.