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Hey there,

This weekend I was out walking the dog and lifted my gaze up the long trunk of a tree that was twisted and bent. It had grown around obstacles, merging amicably with the rest of the forest. The light was filtering down forming a halo around a particular branch that pointed the way along the trail.

I’ve been focusing my attention so much on the path before me, on spotting distractions in advance to train Leo to walk with me, on watching what he’s sniffing and stopping him from eating everything he comes across that I haven’t been looking up, admiring the beauty all around.

It’s not the first time I’ve had such tunnel vision. The tendency to move close in, to give my full attention to some project or plight or person at the exclusion of all else is both a survival trick and a limitation. I can be extremely productive when it’s a task that gets my focus or I can be derailed by depression and rumination when I zero in on challenging events like we’ve been beset with the past two-plus years. In the latter instance, the overwhelming narrative inside my head is that I’m not helping enough and can’t because I’m of such little significance. I view my work as lacking purpose and impact. I view my privileged life with guilt, my moments of happiness with suspicion.

And yet, it’s the small moments of joy, the times when I can look beyond the paw prints on the trail and see the woods surrounding me that give me energy to keep going and to make a difference in the ways that I can. There’s research that backs this up. We build resilience, the ability to rise after setbacks and stress, by noting life’s little joys.

The psychologist Adam Grant explains in this interview that it’s not about denying difficult feelings: “it takes a tremendous amount of energy to bottle up emotions.” Rather we can allow these emotions to be present while also cultivating a sense of hope by noting joyful moments. When put into regular practice, this builds the muscle to shift how you process your day or negative occurrences so that it limits the power of those events. They don’t take you down for as long. They don’t occupy as much personal time and energy. It’s like the difference between cooking with and without a greased pan. In one case you can flip the fried egg effortlessly, while the other leaves you hangry, scrubbing incessantly with a nasty stink in the air.

As Grant says, “the happiest people are not those who maintain a constant level of happiness throughout their lives, but rather those who have dips and climbs, and who tell redemptive narratives: stories where something bad happened, but something good came out of it.”

So this weekend as the calendar turned to July and the fireworks cracked for false freedom and the oppressive heat mirrored all the ways that we are oppressed and oppressing, I took note of some recent moments of joy (because beauty and terror, remember).

Leo paws upstairs and into the bedroom to wake me in the morning and his nose pokes up on the bed, his tongue slapping me with kisses. Sometimes he brings me the t-shirt I left out in the other room or a pair of socks. He loves socks.

The humid air is heavy with the sweet earthy scent of wet wood, trees rotting on the forest floor as we hike through the Bruce trail, the red clay path in brilliant contrast to the green trees. Down in the valley, the surrounding hill is awash in purple clover and tall dry grass that whispers pleasantries in the breeze.

The soundtrack to my sweaty exercise results in an impromptu solo dance party as my headphones pump ‘90s hip hop and dance tracks in my ears. I mean, rhythm is a dancer.

I relish the brain freeze from a juicy orange popsicle after the evening dog walk.

The sunrise coming in through my office window when the rest of the world is asleep lights up my colour-coded bookshelf as if pointing towards what I should read next.

As I write these reflections my heart rate slows, I feel calmed. What simple pleasures are bolstering you lately?

Lisa
xo

Related resources:

• ​Design an environment that supports your resilience by bringing you joy.
• ​Dance for joy.
• “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” From On Joy and Sorrow, a poem by Khalil Gibran, author of The Prophet.
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