It’s possible to delight in someone else’s delight
As a reward to myself for running several errands, I stopped at Wawa to buy a lemonade. The two self-checkout lanes were full, so I walked up to the cashier with a smile and asked her how she was. She was very charming and happy to chat, which is my most favorite kind of cashier. “I’m good,” she replied. “Just a little tired. But it’s been a good day and I’ll get to rest soon.”
As I tapped my card, something over my shoulder caught her eye and she lit up like a Christmas tree. She was beaming with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. She realized that I was looking at her curiously and she said, “Oh! That’s my sister!” Her delight at seeing her sister unexpectedly immediately became my delight. I was smiling almost as broadly as my new acquaintance and said, “Hello sister!” to her sister as I left the store.
It’s possible to practice delight
My delight at her joy lasted for the entire drive home and made me think of a book I came across years ago: Ross Gay’s delightfully aptly named book, The Book of Delights. On his 42nd birthday, he noticed how delightful delight feels and decided to write an essay each day until his 43rd birthday about something that delighted him. (His story is extra delightful to me, a recovering perfectionist, because he missed a day almost immediately and, nevertheless, persisted.)
Gay’s practice of seeking daily delight is very appealing to me. While I haven’t yet made it my New Year’s resolution, it has often been a top contender, so I’m not too surprised that one of the things I did on that delightful afternoon was to sit down and make a little list of things that had delighted me that day. Even though none of them were as enormously delightful to me as it looked like seeing her sister was for the cashier, thinking about them was – forgive me – delightful.
- Having the time to take my time that morning
- The family of finches popping in and out of my little birdhouse
- The tiny green tomatoes on my young plants
- The fuzzy stems of sunflowers
- The way my dog looks adoringly at me as we wait to cross the street
- Sneezing (doesn’t it feel great to sneeze?!)
- Stepping out of air-conditioning into soft summer air
- Practicing yoga on my patio
- The fact that I have dog walking “friends” simply because we smile at each other day after day
- Stepping out my backdoor to cut fresh herbs for our dinner
- A York Peppermint Patty
Delighting in someone else’s delight is free and easy
As lovely as each of these delights was to me, my experience of the cashier’s delight was even more so – perhaps because we shared it. In fact, shareability seems to be the key. My delight at her delight wound up immediately delighting my dog, as I was very silly and playful with him when I walked in the door. Perhaps delight begets delight?
Delight over someone else’s delight, I realize, is free and easy. There was no impulse to cling to the happy moment or to wish it would never end (both very natural human impulses that can immediately dampen any happy thing) because it was not my moment. The moment was all hers and the chance to witness it was simply delightful.
My delight in the cashiers delight was also completely free of envy or jealousy. While I did think to myself, “I would be just as delighted to see my sister through the window as she was,” that thought made me happy – and made my sister happy as well when I texted her about what I’d witnessed. My delight was genuine, heartfelt and wholly unselfish. My delight was 100% about the woman I’d seen be delighted.
It is not surprising that the more you look for delights the more you are delighted
In interviews that he gave to promote his book, Ross Gay described developing his “delight muscle.” The further he got into his year-long project, the more delights he noticed each day. The yogi in me hears this and is not at all surprised. He was practicing. Like yoga, a huge part of practicing delight is learning to pay attention. A key step in mindfulness is carefully choosing what we’re paying attention to, because what we give our awareness to will grow. We want to focus on what we want to develop.
As we move through our days, Gay and the ancient yogis seem to agree, it’s important that we’re mindful about where we invest our attention. We want to choose something inviting and inspiring; something that keeps us engaged and eager to return. I can’t imagine anything that fits those criteria better than paying attention to delight, can you?
This is the fourth in a series of essays unpacking yoga sutra 1.33. Delighting in the happiness of others (mudita) is the fourth quality that Patanjali encourages students to develop in order to maintain a peaceful mind. (The other three are equanimity, friendliness, and compassion.) Practicing delight uproots envy and jealousy. A steppingstone to developing your “delight-for-others muscle” is to practice noticing your own delights. Remember, the more you look for delights, the more you will find!