Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Delight and Joy Are Survival Mechanisms and Acts of Resistance | Ross Gay

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

How rethinking these often twee concepts can change your life and maybe the world. Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.In this episode we talk about:What got Ross interested in the subject of delightHow noting delight can be a tool for counter programming against our negativity biasWhy Ross argues that there is an ethical component to delightThe benefits of writing by handHow both using a smartphone and rushing can be delight blockersThe difference between delight and joy What he means when he refers to the “offenses of joy”And the connection between grief and joy Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/ross-gaySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm your host Dan Harris. Hey, how are we doing everybody? Words like delight and joy. Yeah, on one level, they sound great. But on another level, especially when you're as persnickety about languages, I am. These words can come off as tweet or saccharine or cliché to the point of meaninglessness. My guess today, however, this guy casts these terms delight and joy in a whole new light.

He makes them concrete and attractive and actionable. He also makes them radical. He portrays delight and joy as necessary for our very survival and also as acts of resistance. Ross Gay is perhaps best known for having written a book called The Book of Delights in which he cataloged one item or experience every day that gave him delight. Now he's back with a new book called The Book of More Delights. So we're going to talk about both of those books in this interview as well as a book that came out between those two books called Insighting Joy. It's a wide-ranging interview. We talk about what got Ross interested in the subjects of delight and joy in the first place.

How noting delight can be a tool for counter programming against our evolutionarily wired negativity bias, why Ross argues that there's an ethical component to Delight, the benefits of writing by hand, how both using smartphones and rushing through your daily activities can be Delight blockers, the difference between Delight and Joy, what he means when he refers to the offenses of joy, and the connection between grief and joy.

A little bit more about Ross before we get started here. He's also written four books of poetry. One of those books, the catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He's also a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a nonprofit free fruit for all food, justice and joy project? And he teaches at Indiana University. Busy dude. Bosch Legacy returns. Now streaming.

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It's really great to have you here. I'm excited to do this interview. Let me just start with maybe an embarrassingly obvious question, but why delight? How did you get so interested in this subject? It's a good question. It keeps on like I sometimes I think I know and then sometimes I think I don't. For now, this is kind of what I think may have happened. I have a book, my third book of poems is called Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude. There's a lot of Oads to the garden, to these community orchard projects, to all kinds of stuff. But it's a rich and deep, complicated, sorrowful,

and whatever you call it, ranbunctions kind of book. But it's a book that I wrote just as a book of poems. And after it came out, people started talking to me about joy. They started describing the book as a book of joy, or a joyful book, or something like that. I wasn't actually prepared for that in a way. And it made me think, I think, it made me think

more about what that question is, like what constitutes a poem, a joyful poem or what constitutes a delightful poem or something. Anyway, because this was in my head, not on account of me, but on account of other people kind of reading my work, I think that kind of contributed to this thing, like I was just taking a walk and having a delightful day. And I was like, oh, I should write a little essay about this moment of delight. And then very quickly, it was sort of given to me by the wind or something, to do it every day for a year, right, a short essay about something that delights you. And I knew that that would be useful one because I knew people

might be interested in this. And then I had a hunch it would be interesting to me that there might be something to be learned. There would definitely be something to be learned by doing a little a little writing about something that delights me every day for a year. So you're chugging along as a poet in the world and you're putting out books of poetry and your third one comes out and people come up to you and say, my interpretation is that this is about joy and delight. And that was not your intention, but you took in the feedback and noticed that you had a better radar for delight as a consequence and started turning that into a project and that resulted in the book of delight.

And now it's follow up. Is that a rough summary that's reasonably accurate? Yeah, that's a rough, a rough, reasonably accurate approximation of something that for now I'll say is how it happens. But there must have been something, so that's like the factual or semi-factual account. But there must have been something in you that was clearly, there was something in you that was very receptive to this idea of delight. Because if somebody had said that to me, I might not have turned it into a couple of books.

Yeah, I think there was something for sure. I was cognizant of some kind of need or desire to actually practice and attend to what I now know is like attending to what I love. As opposed to attending to what is terrifying or anxiety-provoking or whatever, etc. I did know something without knowing. I didn't know that like, oh yeah, if I commit a certain amount of time or attention to this daily, as a practice, something will happen, something will shift or move around. I think there was probably the prospect that it would just be the case that I get

better writing essays because I've written 300 and some essays over the course of the year, which I think did happen. But I figured there was also a kind of a more important thing going on that would happen too. And it did. You know, kind of like my eyes got turned on too, things that I love, that I often throughout my life

probably that wasn't noticing, or wasn't noticing as things that I love. Right, right, right, right. We all have this evolutionarily wired negativity bias, which made sense from the viewpoint of natural selection, you know, you want to be on the lookout for threats. That helps get the DNA into the next generation. But it sounds like you, after having written this book of poetry, got this idea for a new book where you're going to notice something delightful every day and write an essay every day for a year,

you're kind of counter-programming. Yeah, that's a really good way to put it because absolutely, I feel like this sort of contasion of moves is a real thing and our own moods and other people's moves and the evidence for that to me. I mean, for one, like one thing is that I'm not just delighted inside of the little cave of my brain. I'm delighted because I'm observing things outside of the little cave of my brain. And often those things are like these instances of sweetness. Like people take his care of someone on the airplane or something sweet happening on the corner of a street or like some interaction with a chipmunk or some I don't know. So that's one thing is that it's often the witness scene of a kind of sweetness outside of myself.

But the other thing that I think that points to this thing that I'm wondering about the sort of contagion moves is that people are so inclined after they hear about like this little delight thing. They're like, oh yeah, I did that. After I read your book, I did that for a little bit. I don't do it every day, but I try to do it once a week or I talk to my kid and I ask him what's delight in them

or whatever, some version of that. And it is my experience that when people are like, yo, this is what I love, that I'm inclined to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, what do I love? Is this why you say there's an ethical component to delight? Absolutely, exactly. Yeah, I feel like that sort of, I wonder, I should say,

that sort of bias, that kind of look out bias, heads up bias, must also be some kind of inclination to notice what is nourishing and caring, and also not just to notice it, but I think I wonder. I mean, I wonder if there's also some inclination to actually share it. You could argue that there's an ethical component to getting your shit together in any way, that we are all vectors, and we gotta choose what we're gonna be a vector for anxiety, fear, hatred, or, and sometimes we're gonna feel all those things and pass it along to other people, but are we gonna try to turn the dial toward something a little bit more helpful? Yeah, I think you're right. So you did the first book, and now you're back with another one.

Is it just that you just can't quit this practice? What's going on? Well, there's a couple of things that happen. One is that my buddy, when I finished it, and I write about this in the introduction, my buddy who I was with at like a writing residency, he asked if I was gonna keep on doing it. This delight project. That was August 1st, 2017, I think, and we were in Texas together.

He asked me if I was gonna keep doing it, and I was like, I'm sure it'll roll into other things that I'm working on, but I don't know that I'm gonna keep doing it explicitly. But it did make me think at that moment, oh, maybe I should do it'll roll into other things that I'm working on, but I don't know that I'm gonna keep doing it explicitly. But it did make me think at that moment, oh, maybe I should do it every three years, every five years, or whatever number of years. Not only because I thought it would be interesting

and fun to keep doing it, like writing short essays about what delights me, I'm also kind of interested in projects that people make that go on and on and on and on. I was sort of thinking about, you know, I grew up painting and I love painting and there's a painter named Robert Motherwell and he has a series of paintings called

Energy to Spanish Republic. And it's all these paintings that he made. He must have made them over 30 or 40 years maybe, but all of these sort of series, there's a lot of writers who will write sort of poems that just go on forever. And I'm interested in that as a project. So it's as a literary project. I was also curious to know like, oh yeah, what in five years will I be finding delightful? And the thing that is interesting is that it's also a book

about aging because it's the same parameters, like I write them daily, I write them by hand, I write them quickly. But now one of the things is that I'm noticing things that I've noticed before, and I'm five years older. And everyone's five years older. My mother's five years older. Like my father died five more years, etc, etc, etc. What's the difference five years later, like, are you noticing how delightful it is to remember to bring a sweatshirt places because you get cold easier,

changing your glasses prescription because you realize you can't see shit anymore. What's, what's changed? Well, you know, I have one, it's buddy, you see I have one in there that's like about playing basketball, pick up basketball with these young guys. They're probably like 20 or something and me and my buddy are playing.

And this thing happens where they there used to what happened, there would have been a tussle, something would have happened. But me at my like more grown up age, I think I was probably 48 when I was writing it, was like, I don't need to do that. So that's an example, like these sorts of things where I'm like, oh yeah, I remember when that would have caused something else.

You know, yeah, that's an example. That's an example. I want to talk about some specific examples a second, but just going back to your rules, I believe the four rules were something every day, the entries would be drafted quickly and written by hand and you would begin and end on your birthday, which is August 1st. Why by hand? Cause I just to jump in to say why I'm asking that. Jennifer Egan, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist,

was on this show recently, and she talked a lot about how important it is to write by hand for her. That's what's motivating this question. Yeah, I feel like there are two things. I think first was by hand was a way for me to make it easy. You know, a lot of people would give themselves a daily practice of writing,

and they wouldn't have a hard time with that. And a lot of people could have a, plenty of people I know could have a daily practice of writing for four hours a day, or two thousand words a day. They could do that. But I kind of know myself enough to know that I'm not really that writer.

So one, I kind of wanted to make it simple, which is partly why I made the 32nd thing. But I think that's also why I did it by hand, so that wherever I was, like if I was on the train or if I was just sitting out at a park or something or at the coffee shop, I could very easily, I didn't have to have gear to do the work. But the other thing that is very important to the thinking that happens in these essays is that when I write by hand, there's a different kind of syntax that I use, a different kind of logic, a different kind of grammar, I think, then when I'm writing on the computer and part of that, I feel fairly certain has to do with the fact that I'm not deleting a lot of my thinking. So I can kind of see the detritus,

which is, to me, very interesting and often fruitful, the stuff that remains. And one of the things that this is kind of interesting to me is that when I was learning how to revise these essays, five years ago when I first did this project, the first 10 I wrote or the first 20 I wrote, whatever. And I started revising them the way I know how to revise. And I was like really cleaning up the syntax and cleaning up the sentences and all of

this stuff. And I was making them what I consider kind of terrible. They're getting very boring. And I realized, oh no, you got to figure out how to honor this kind of weird, rangel, digressive, physical syntax. So it took a little while, but I think I got it. To my ear, that really rhymes with what Jennifer Egan was saying that as soon as you step to a computer,

you're in a kind of analytical perfectionistic mode of fixing the thing. Instead of just letting it flow out of you. I'm realizing, I do quite a bit of writing, not at the level of you or Jennifer E realizing, I do quite a bit of writing, not at the level of you or Jennifer Egan, but I do a lot of writing. And as I heard her talk about this, I was like, oh, yeah, I should be doing more by hand because I'm up my own ass a lot while I'm at the computer.

Yeah, I didn't think of it like that. I love that. That it is. It inclines us, that analytical thing inclines us to try to fix everything as it's happening in real time. And fixing, you know, that word fixing to mean both kind of correct, but also to me like stick it in place, put a pin in it. To me, it might impede the possibilities of really kind of wild, beautiful, unexpected thought. Would you be okay with me throwing out a few of the things that delighted you in your newest book, the Book of more delights.

Could I throw some out and get you to hold forth on them? I'm not expecting you to regurgitate what you wrote, but just to tell us a little bit about them, is that you cool? You down with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Sure. Paper menus.

Oh, man. I love paper menus, in part, because I love the physical world. So the essay is about noticing, and I'm in a restaurant, and a kid comes up and asks if I'm gonna want to pay for me and my buddy if we want to pay for a menu if we're gonna scan it and look at it. My phone doesn't do that. I know. I refuse to do that.

But partly the pleasure, the delight is in just being like, nope, I'm not doing that, which in the essay, I said, that's actually a joy to refuse that kind of shit to me as joy. But I also feel like the delight in a paper menu, just like the delight in cash, just like the delight in anything that allows us and encourages us to actually touch things that touch each other. A menu is something that you point to and you tell your friend to look at and think about what they're going to get and the server is going to do the same thing. Maybe you might ask them what they think is good.

It's a physical object that we get to gather around or circulate around. When you say your phone doesn't do that, do you mean that you carry a flip phone that has no camera? Yeah, it's a very dumb phone. It's a very dumb phone. When you say your phone doesn't do that, do you mean that you carry a flip phone that has no camera? Yeah, yeah, it's a very dumb phone. It's a very dumb phone. What's that all about? I love asking people for directions.

I love not knowing sometimes where I'm going. I love the object, the physical object, and that's sort of what that's about. I also know that I feel bad. I used to have one of those phones and it doesn't make me feel good. So I actually just like stopped and started to realize, like, oh,

these are all the things that a dumb phone permits you to be, which is like sometimes like really sweetly helpless. You're gonna ask for help. So a smartphone is a kind of delight blocker? I would say. I would say. I would say. I would say, it definitely, you know, it is one of these things. We have so many of them and we're talking into one of some of them right now, but there

are so many of these things that make us imagine that we can do shit by ourselves and that we don't need one another. And so much of this delight thing, the older I get, the more I'm like, oh, so much of delight is just like the sweet evidence of our connection. And phones that they do a lot of, we talk a lot about, or the discourse, the advertising discourse is a lot about their connectedness. This really, it seems to me about versions of disconnection. I want to put a pin in that. This kind of, this is my phrase, not yours, but this suspicion of individualism, which I see coursing through your work, I want to get to that, but I'm going to hold on it for

a second if that's okay with you. Let's just go back to the list of delights. The clothes line. Oh, yeah. I just one day noticed as I was hanging up my clothes and sort of actually being aesthetic about it, like sort of putting certain colors next to other colors and even like thinking about the way the socks look next to the t-shirt, et cetera. I realized, oh, this is just one example of a million things that we do that we don't think about them as aesthetic experiences or productions or something,

but that we do with a kind of aesthetic flourish. Sweep in the floor, foam the laundry, whatever. I think it's just made me sort of glad to notice how often, oh yeah, I'm actually thinking about how I can do this beautifully. So you can fuse any of the mundane activities, how you stack your t-shirts in that drawer or shelf, how you arrange the toilet-shirts in that drawer or shelf, how you arrange

the toiletries next to the sink with some sort of ethic of aesthetics that can elevate it beyond the just quotidian. I guess so, yeah. And how sweet that we all have our own little things that we want to make beautiful. And obviously they aren't all the same things. But pretty much everyone, it seems to me, is like, oh yeah, I'm going to tell my shoes in the prettiest way ever. And someone else is going to do their dishes

in the prettiest way. Do not own a dryer. Now we have a dryer. We have a dryer, you know, in the summer for sure. I like to hang my clothes up. Braces on adults. I just noticed these college students, so young adults, and one of them had braces, and I realized how much it makes my heart melt

to see adults with braces. And it made me think how, again, those sort of attempts, I guess it's another thing, these sort of like desires to sort of beautify. It feels so sweet. It really melts my heart. I have a buddy who's also like, got some braces and he's like my age. It's so tender. It's, I don't, I can't even quite articulate it, but it's so tender. Often it's with men, when men who are sort of like trying to just, it's not self-care.

It's something like youthful and soft. Something, oh, maybe it's this. Maybe it's like the expression of need. Like one of those things that might articulate or might like indicate need. So like when you see like a, you know, like someone my age in a very subtle way with, you know, like for instance, in that essay, it's the braces, it's like,

oh yeah, that's, they need help. They need something. Like we do, we need something. And you know, for me, you know, I think a lot about men and boys, and I think partly the expression of that need among people for whom that expression is so often sort of like forbidden. Is it a little extra softening to me.

Yeah, I'm around your age. I think we're both around 50. And I don't want to speak for younger men, but I think men of our generation and older, we weren't encouraged to express need or vulnerability at all. And so the brace is, it's just like a, yeah, it's an implicit admission that that softens you and them.

Yeah, exactly. Early exclamation point, that's the header, early exclamation point of one of your delights. I'm just gonna read this one, I'm gonna read something because in particular, I just liked to this. First of all, I'm pathologically punctual myself. So I, I'm either, yes, I related to that, although I was late for something today,

which just made me so stressed. Anyway, you're early for a coffee, you're lunch with somebody and you're loving it, and the person's late, which you actually also love, although that drives me bad shit. But anyway, you're, you're, what you're right here is, it might also be that early-ness,

maybe especially early- on a count of someone or something else's lateness can feel like the universe just dropped a bouquet of time and often a luminous bouquet of time in your lap. I love that and I wonder if you'd just maybe say a little bit more about it. Yeah, it's just, I'm not an early person and so we have problems. I know. So and you

know, so often I believe it in my life where I'm very punctual, but periodically, something goes wrong, like they kind of traffic jam and they just feel like they feel terrible like I like. But to me, especially when I'm on time because they're really punctual, man, it feels like, yeah, like I said, like the universe just drops some time in my lap. And I think partly that has to do with, you know, just probably being busy, it's sort of a known, you know, an awareness. I think I mentioned that in the essay that I kind of noticed. Sometimes feeling busy, you know, when something gets canceled, man, that's sweet.

It's so sweet. But there is something about that in that delight about the universe conspiring to give you a little extra time. There's something about that. Like, oh, you didn't expect it. You really didn't expect it at all. And now you have like eight minutes. I came to everyone and I said to watch John Morant

do something. Watch the best dunk in the history of the basketball or something. On your phone, on your dumb phone, can you do that on your phone? No, on my view, on my compete. Okay. But I might be bringing it to a meeting. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, that really, setting aside the whole punctuality piece of it, the bouquet of time

part of it really resonated with me. And there's nothing better than a canceled meeting. I mean, just nothing. The whole complexion of the day changes when somebody cancels on you. It's awesome. And I was wondering how you'd feel about that, Dan, a person who's very punctual yourself. I love it. I love it because I'm spending so much of my time and I'm aware this is not a great use of my time, worrying about getting from one thing to the next and checking things off my to-do list. And I've seen plenty of evidence in my end of one personal experience, but also in some

of the research about the connection between rushing and mood and behavior. In other words, if you're rushing all the time, you are a lot less likely to be pleasant to the people around you, never mind how you are with yourself. And of course, those two are interconnected. Yeah. Is it funny? Just today, I was, I was going to get in the gym and work out before I came over here.

What is like the first day of school here and I didn't realize it at all. And so the gym and work out before I came over here. But it's like the first day of school here and I didn't realize it at all. And so the gym on campus is nuts. And I walked around and I was like, okay, that's taken, that's taken. I'm gonna go set up early for this conversation and it felt so nice. And even as I was going away, driving over to my office, listening to Janet Jackson,

I was like, how sweet it is to like not be Russian? Cause I do like to like push it. So I have to, there is something about that. Like is the wrong word. I understand that what you're saying about, there may be some pathology to the rushing. There's some part of us that wants or needs it. Yeah. But talk about a delight us that wants or needs it.

But talk about a delight blocker. Oh totally, that's totally right. Yeah. Coming up, Ross Gay talks about how writing books about the light have helped strengthen his delight radar, the difference between delight and joy, and Y Ross sees joy both as a practice of survival and as an act of resistance. Emily, do you remember when One Direction called it a day? I think you'll find there are still many people who can't talk about it. Well luckily, we can. A lot, because our new season of Terabli Famous is all about the first one directioner to go it alone. Zayn Malik We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest

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So after having done two of these books, how is your delight radar, your delight muscle now, and did it flag between the two books? I don't think it did really. I feel like I do feel like writing that book. It put me in such a mind. Like it just sort of like got me really alert for the things that I that made me feel a certain kind of way, which I realized was delighted or it made me alert for like, oh, that's the thing that I love that I don't think about articulating

as something that I love and all the time. I spent so much time doing that that now it feels kind of really built into the day. And it feels, yeah, it feels really sweet to sort of just be able to drop into that as a practice or a way sometimes more easily than other times, of course. If I'm not feeling good, it's harder to do it, which is why it's nice to be around other people who are able to do it when you maybe don't feel up for it.

Yeah, I found a lot in my various, I don't know if you would ever, you want to call it personal development, spiritual work that the carpool lane or the HOV lane effect is really powerful. It's curating the humans with whom you interact and kind of a big bearing on how you do your life. Yeah, for sure.

We talked about this a little bit earlier, but what's your, and I know you're not dogmatic or evangelical, meaning I'm not just way about the light, but what's your pitch to people listening to this for why they should operationalize your insights into their life? And maybe we should also talk about the how of that as well. You're right, I'm not dogmatic about it. I wouldn't say anyone should, but I would say for me, it's been very interesting to notice not only how I feel a kind of capaciousness that comes with feeling or with practicing articulating what I love and wondering about what I love,

which means also wondering about why I love it, which probably means about wondering about the cosmos of what I love. And then also wondering about why I love it, which probably means about wondering about the cosmos of what I love. And then with sharing that, sharing that wondering, but also sharing the love, there is something really interesting about how it makes you feel or how it encourages me to walk through the world. What it makes me feel a lot less alone,

because like I said earlier, I think delight is really the kind of pleasant evidence of connection so often. That feels really important. Whatever it is, whatever the ways that we have to feel like we are not alone, it's interesting to that. So many of the delights happen in the garden, and the garden is a place to me where are not being alone is so kind of on steroids. You can kind of just see like, oh, we are not being alone is so kind of on steroids. You can kind of just see like,

oh, we are really not alone. Like everything is kind of deeply connected and threaded together. So I think that would be some of this stuff. And also something about the light that I've been learning is that it requires that we're just curious. We just don't know the end of things. We don't know everything. And curiosity feels so much like a part of being okay. We're just wondering what's gonna happen. It feels like being okay, you know? I don't know, but I'm interested. What do you mean curiosity feels like being okay? Yeah, you know, it's funny.

I was talking with Sharon Salzburg that we were having a conversation, a Buddhist teacher a few days ago. And I can't remember how she put it, but she said something along the lines of, or we got to this anyway, that disparage the result of knowing everything, because you just know how it's gonna go. And curiosity, wondering about how it's gonna go, is something else. It might, of course, not knowing how it's gonna go as we never do, might provoke all kinds of feelings, but I do feel like curiosity as opposed to knowledge

about how things are gonna go. Invites a kind of like, okay, well, I guess I should check. I guess I should see it. I mean, in the smallest way, and I feel like this is we can all relate to this in our relationships. If I just know how a conversation is going to go, why am I going to have it?

As opposed to being like, well, I wonder how it's going to go. I guess I better fess up to the fact that I don't actually know everything about this other person, what they think, what they feel, how they're going to respond to the thing that I'm going to ask them, et cetera, et cetera. The evidence of that, we can do that every day, or with someone in line at the store or whatever. We don't know what someone's going to do, just like we don't know what tomorrow is going to be.

And I feel like that's sort of what I meant. I know that's rambling. This is a safe space for rambling just to be clear. So don't, don't, don't bet it yourself. This is handwriting here, not word-price. Okay, okay. But just to pick up on what you're saying, because I hadn't thought about this before, or at least not in this way,

you know, in Buddhism we talk a lot about the don't know mind or beginner's mind. And it really is kind of the only rational stance and non-negotiably entropic universe. And even though it's not comfortable, it's much more comfortable to grasp onto certainty, or at least on one level, it's more comfortable. But there's a subtle and unsettled pain associated

with that kind of dogmatism. And if you can just relax and do it like, I don't fucking know, there is a comfort there. Yeah, and I think there's a comfort and relaxing into that with other people. Yes. And you know, actually, I have the occasion, the lucky occasion, a period of it gets

to sort of try to define joy. And I think that might be a pretty reasonable definition of it too, the sort of gathering together in wonder, the gathering together and not knowing, which means we're gathering together in sorrow, just like we're gathering together in celebration. All right, you talked about joy. That brings me to another of your books that I wanted to talk about. We established that you've written a bunch of books of poetry.

You've also written these two books of delight. And you wrote a book last year, or it came out last year called Insighting Joy. So you were just talking about definitions. I'd be curious, what's the difference between delight and joy, and then we can go from there? I think delight is occasional, and delight is the hummingbird buzzing by your ear. Whoa, that's delight.

I think of joy as something that is not occasional. Joy is something that is always present and it's available to us and you kind of enter it. Word finds you or something, but it doesn't feel like it requires an occasion. It feels like maybe an occasion can sort of re-aller you to it. But the light feels very much like something happens and you feel delight. So delight's occasional joy is kind of a factory setting. Well, joy is, I mean, joy the way I think of joy is like it's our fundamental connection, which we get tuned into on and off. It seems to me some of us more than others.

And I feel like it might be an occasion that alerts us to that. I mean, I guess you can argue that it is always going to be an occasion, or it might just be like, no, this is here. It's just it's here. We can just, we can decide to observe how everything is connected.

Someone could argue that not everything's not connected. But I'm going to argue that you just witness, I'm looking when I look out the window, I'm looking at this little forest here, which is one of the places where you can kind of like steady how things are connected, one of the million places you can study there. Whereas Delight, you know, this is something,

again, like I didn't know I was gonna say this, but maybe not only is it occasional, it's like kind of dictated by taste and stuff. Some of them might just not feel delighted at all about clothes on the clothesline. It might just be like, oh, your clothes are gonna smell like dog. You know, whereas I'm saying like,

oh man, it looks like a quilt, it's beautiful. You know? But this notion of connection, this notion of this fundamental connection, I do feel like that's not really something that is unique to anyone. I feel again, I feel like there are definitely sort of practices or folks maybe who seem to be closer to it, guides or something, but I don't feel like it's special. I feel like it's always there. And yet you've said that delight is the pleasant

evidence of connection. So to be a little cute here, delight and joy are connected. Totally. Totally. Yeah. A friend of mine was like, you got to really tax on them, I see things. Like you got to be able to articulate how this and that. And that's kind of as good as I can get. Delight occasional, delight also a signal of connection. Joy sort of, as you've said, like the factories. I don't exactly know what that means,

but I think it just means like it's just how it is. And that feels yeah, like it's just there. We can fall into it periodically, we get swallowed into it. So in this book, Insighting Joy, and Insighting is a deliberately chosen word that I'll let you talk about, but you talk about joy as a practice of survival.

What do you mean by that? Well, it's another one of these things like connection. Like if we practice our connection, it seems to me, I don't know how you put it like a some generalization that's not quite accurate, but in a world, in a culture or whatever, there's a lot of disconnection. And we can just talk about one of the evidences of which is like the technology that is so sort of prominent in our lives, which is the technology of, I would say, disconnection.

If we practice connection, practice is actually a connection, and in deciding joy, I sort of wonder about all of these different sites of the incitement of joy, these places, these practices, and I talk about pick up basketball, I talk about school, I talk about gardening, I sort of talk about potlucks. It seems to me that those things, not only are they the practice of the evidence of our connection, they're also a kind of, they're a kind of reputation to the illusion of our alienation or a reputation to the encouragement to believe that we're alien from each other, from the earth, from whatever, from what we might love, etc. Which is kind of

why just to go right to the incitement, I use that word because I feel like our witnessing one another, our witnessing our witness in one another, our witness in our connections of one another, is really a kind of, I said, reputation, but I think it's more actually emphatic than that to a mode of life that would suggest that we're separate. If we feel connected fundamentally on a very basic level, we'll be more inclined to share. If we're more inclined to share in deep ways, that's a real like problem for the number of systems that we find ourselves in the midst of.

On a very basic level, like if we have a tool share, it's like, okay, so we have to buy less tools. Or you can go on and on and on and build out from that. That seems to connect to your description of joy, not only as a practice of survival, but also as an active resistance. Yeah. That quote is my friend and mentor, Toy Derrick hot, the writer, Toy Derrick hot. She said that, and I think that's accurate, and it's more than that too. I feel like it's an offense actually. And to come back to that paper menus thing, I have this little footnote.

I have too many footnotes in Insighting Joy, and then I have maybe too many footnotes in this more delights, but one of the footnotes talks about how the refusal, sometimes, of certain things can feel like an offense, like one of the offenses of joy. And I say it feels to me like one of the offenses of joy. And I say it feels to me like the one of the offenses of joy to refuse those QR codes.

And an offense because it's like, no, you know what? I'm gonna have to get closer with my buddy here. I'm gonna have to let the server know that I might need help. You might have to actually point to something. And the result is maybe that we're gonna be closer. We're to be closer to one another. For sure, our need for one another is going to be more evident. Coming up, Ross talks about how noting what the light you can be an antidote to loneliness. Andy talks about the connection between grief and joy. When if we told you that there's a darker side to royalty, and more often than not, life as a prince or princess is anything but a fairy tale?

I'm Brooke Sifrin, and I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams, and we're the hosts of Wonder E's podcasts, Even the Rich and Rich and Daily, and we're so excited to tell you about our brand new podcast called Even the Royals, where we'll be pulling back the curtain on royal families past and present from all over the world. On Even the Royals, we'll cover everything from stories you thought you knew, like Marie Antoinette, who was actually a victim of a vulgar propaganda campaign which started a wild chain of events that led to her eventual beheading. Or Catherine Damodici, who was assumed to be responsible for one of the most devastating

massacres in French history. But in reality, she was a mother holding on to her dying dynasty. Royal status might be bright and shiny, but it comes with the expense of everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow even the royals on the Wendry app or wherever you get your podcasts. If you don't want to wait for more episodes, join Wendry Plus today to listen exclusively and add free. Wait for more episodes, join Wondery Plus today to listen exclusively and add free. I see in your work at this conversation a lot of I used the word suspicion earlier. Maybe that's the right word.

Maybe it should be stronger or weaker. These are the structures in the modern world. Consumer culture, individualism, technology, you're a guy who has a dumb phone and only rarely uses his dryer. So is your view that we should be overturning these systems? What do you wanna see happen here? Rethinking them, overturning them. Maybe this is beyond your remit as a poet

and writer, I don't know, but I'm curious. It's a good question. I don't know, but I'm curious. It's a good question. I feel like I'm curious to note and study what happens when we live as we so often do outside of those strictures. So I want to pay as much attention as possible to the ways that we care for one another, tend to one another, look out for one another, outside of, I don't know,

I wanna say outside of any compulsion to do so. I wanna study like I do in that inside enjoy book, how pick up basketball is actually a game where we're just figuring out how to be together and keep a game going. We're figuring out how to be together and keep a game going. We're figuring out how to make a beautiful thing together. I want to witness and pay attention to how most people who guard and give away their extra shit.

If you have extras or kinies, there's something wrong with you. If you don't give away your extras or kinies, it's just like, if you let them rot, there's something wrong. And that's not special. That's every day. That's every day. It's every day. Obviously, if I want to write about it,

I'm inclined to wonder about it with other people. And then, partly, I'm inclined to wonder about it with other people, because I'm kind of like, yo, this is a thing too. This is a thing too. Like, it doesn't really matter who you are. Like, if you fall down on the sidewalk, like, for the most part,

some person next to you is gonna go, okay? For the most part, that's not special. And the delights kind of alert me to this. So often, we're kind of like looking out for each other in these ways. And we're taking care of each other in these ways. In ways that we do not often notice, you know, we do not for whatever reason, that could be another show we don't necessarily attend to. And I am inclined to notice it myself. In part, I'll say because I am someone who is very easy for me to feel very alone in the world, cosmically alone.

Fear is not unfamiliar to me, those kinds of things. And the more that I study those kinds of connections that are, again, are not special, but are wondrous, the more I feel like, oh yeah, it's okay to be alive, it's pretty cool. Okay, now we're getting to the deep answer to my first question, which is why the light. What is driving you here? And it does seem like it's an antidote to what has sometimes been called the wound of existence. Yeah, that's pretty good. And I think if the wound of existence, there's probably many of them. But the wound of existence, just a simple fact that our bodies change over time and what we love will go away and this thing will change and go away and we will feel pain and everyone we love will feel pain

and die. That actually feels like a very orienting and potentially gathering up sort of notion too. Obviously, it can be the kind of thing that makes us want to be afraid of each other, but it might also be the kind of thing that makes us want to lean toward each other and be like, oh, the wound of existence for you too, huh? You know, and that kind of thing. And I do feel like this delight practice, which again, to say it, if delight is studying a version of connection, it is trying to figure out how we are not alone. So to get back to what we were talking about before of like your sometimes subtle, sometimes unsettled and very direct critiques of many of the structures in which we live, again capitalism,

consumerism, individualism, tech driven isolation, it's not like you've got some six point plan for building a new world. It's more like you are encouraging us all to a gentle version of red pilling to drop out of the matrix and see that other things are true simultaneously. Yeah, probably. There was a quote where you pretty much say that. This is from Insighting Joy and you're talking about giving away fruit from the community orchard that you were part of establishing.

And I'm going to read a quote from you. I want to give a heads up to the listener that used a big fancy word here that I had to go look up. The word is Rizomatic, R-H-I-Z-O-M-A-T-I-C, which I think is like some sort of botanical, horticultural, agricultural word of brown sort of being connected like through the root structure or something like that. Yes, that's right. That's like raspberry, it's like how roots are connected on the ground.

So here's the quote, despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie, we are in the midst of charismatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually, you name it. It's certainly not the only thing we're in the midst of, but it's the truest thing, by far. Yeah, I guess that's kind of what I'm singing about. I think that's sort of, you pointed out, well, it's a little, you know, I'm so shy about being like,

yeah, I want people to do this, but there is a thing, and I'm like, this's a little, you know, I'm so shy about being like, yeah, I want people to do this, but there is a thing and I'm like, this feels really important to think about. I mean, there's really great things to think about, but this feels like a really important one. I mean, this may be a flaw of mine that derives out of the sort of utilitarian, pragmatic aspects of me being a utilitarian pragmatic aspects of me being a aging white man and a late stage capitalistic context or whatever, but I am all four poetry and beautiful sentiments, but I always want to connect it to some shit you can actually do. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I mean, I get it, too. Like, I spend a lot of years as a basketball coach. And when people are just like jacking up threes without shooting their little five-footers, I'm like, fuck you doing it. You know. You can bring it.

So I hear what you're saying. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. And I feel like probably my inclination is to share it and then see what happens if it moves people, how it moves people. Yeah, because you're not a self-help writer. You're a poet and an essayist and it's a little bit like when people go to pop stars or rock musicians and say, tell us what your lyrics mean and the vocalist will say well or the lyrics

Will say you know, I kind of want to leave that up to interpretation. I don't want to be too explicit But it kind of breaks the magic. Yeah totally and I think there's also this thing of like like I really appreciate A system too like I said I'm gonna coach there's plenty of systems that I really appreciate That's actually not my curiosity. My curiosity is the curiosity itself. I'm sort of learning and becoming more aware of what certain kinds of thinking or certain kinds of writing, slash thinking, seemed to offer to me. And I'm learning also from folks who tell me what the work has meant to them, what it means to them. But I feel like there's something as a writer, but also maybe in an ethical

way too that I'm less inclined to be like, and this is what you do. In part, I wonder if that implies a kind of end of the curiosity. You know what I mean? Like a system implies I know how it is. I don't have any illusion that I know how it is, you know? I kind of like wonder about it with me. Like, I don't know what it is with you. I don't know what it is with my mother. I don't know what it is with X1 and Z. But I also for my own sort of ongoing inquiry, I don't want there to be an end to the inquiry. And sometimes, and I know this isn't at all necessarily the case, but sometimes it feels like there's an inclination to systematize a thing, to know it inside and out and to be done with it.

And I think there's something about that, that I, that I resist. I get it, that makes complete sense to me. And I think of the systematizing or operationalizing of insights to be more about not forgetting, because it's so easy to hear, oh yeah, the light's good for you. Right, and then just start rushing again

and never be delighted. Totally, yeah. I often think about the question of it. And my question is like, what happens to us when we notice what we love and when we notice wonder about articulate and share what we love. That's my question. I'm just very curious about that.

And that feels like a pretty rich, pretty full question itself. It can take a lot of shapes. Let me ask you just a few more questions before I let you go. Back on the subject of joy within the context of Insighting Joy, look, they came out last year. You talk a lot about the connection between grief and joy,

which is not, I would imagine, an obvious connection to many of us. So can you unpack that a little bit? I feel like I learned from this beautiful essay by Zadie Smith called Joy. You know, the idea that joy, and again, joy is being different than, like, gladness or happiness, all of which are like great but joy one of the ways that I think of it is something that isn't like separate from or an alternative to sorrow but it's something that actually emerges from sorrow like it doesn't actually exist absent sorrow one of the expressions of joy is the ways that we help each other, we carry each other through our sorrows. And that's how I think of it. So, and again, it's a kind of like a ground that primal wound

of like, however you want to say it, the things change is a way to sort of think about it or that everything we love is going to be gone or whatever to attend to that by being like for you too. It seems to me that joy is as likely to make you weak as it is to make you like dance. Neither of which are more or less the evidence of joy, but it does feel like joy comes from both or joy might make you want to do both. There's this American Buddhist nun,

him a children has been on this show before. I'm probably an mangle this, but I remember reading, she talked, it's memory serves, about after 9-11, which I'm aware many listeners are young enough, remember what it was like immediately after 9-11. But after 9-11, there was a kind of like national, lack of a list, Tweet word, tenderness.

You know, everything had been totally shaken up. The snow globe had been properly shaken. And we were in touch with impermanence, groundlessness, some fundamental facts that are easy to overlook in a hurtling head forward, making the next purchase type of culture. And I connect that to what you're saying, which is that even when, quote unquote, bad shit happens, you know, somebody dies, you lose a job, you get divorced, there's a natural disaster.

There is a joy in the fact that inherent in that, implicit in that, non-negotiably part of that is a connection to other people, because this is the human condition. Yeah. Yeah. And my sense is that the more we practice being aware of that, the more inclined we are to sort of care for one another, when the horror happens, as it will. That would agree. Like I said, just have a few more questions. This one may seem like a non-sequitor given what we've just discussed, but it connects back to things we discussed a few minutes ago. I was just thinking in preparing for this that I've had a few conversations

on this show lately where people are raising questions about the structure of our society, particularly capitalism and consumerism and individualism, and noticing that many of the people making the most pointed critiques that resonate the most with me tend to be black Americans. So I'm thinking of people like Mia Bird song, Seven Nights Alassie, you, where there's an emphasis on not only a critique, but also a positive case for connection and community. And so I'm wondering if there's something about the Black American experience that might put somebody in that state of mind. I can talk about my own experience.

And like, you know, I was just visiting with my amp butter who's 97 years old every time I say, how old she is, I think I shouldn't say that. But anyway, as we were talking, she just said this thing about some family member went to college, she's a young son of a high-o, some family member moved in the 60s or something to someplace in Illinois or something, I don't know, nearby ish.

But she said like it was so important to let them know that they had a place to go. And as a kind of ethic, you can imagine, I can imagine in my own family that there's a kind of ethic of care or noticing who's cared for you, noticing you're not alone or not letting people feel like they're alone that feels like that, it makes sense to me that my butt or my have that 97 year old black woman might have that in a way that is more profound, frankly, and that sometimes I have to be taught that. I feel like she's a very good guide for me

to be like, remember, you come from people. And I feel like in a certain kind of broad American ethos, you know, the self-made person, that whole story, is so much about pretending you don't come from people, that you don't come from a place, that you were loved, whoever you were, didn't have like many people, that if you spend a little bit of time, you could be like,

oh yeah, that person, they didn't just help me, they kind of saved my life. So yeah, I might wager that as a little bit of a, in my going experience anyway, that a lot of my folks have had to be acutely practicing belonging to one another and have probably not been well served, actually, by the stories of the contrary,

the whole stories of like, that self-made bullshit. Yeah. I suspect that nearly every time you do an interview, the interviewer thinks they're the first person to make the joke about how it was a delight, and a joy to talk to you just like I'm

often confronted with people feeling very clever when they say I'm 10% happier after having talked to you, which I don't hold against them I get it to affectionate and yet it gets a little old if you've heard the joke a thousand times, but nonetheless it has been delightful to talk to you. I do want to ask you my traditional two closing questions. One is, is there something that I should have asked that I didn't ask? Is there a place you wanted to go I didn't take us, slush you? No, no. Then the final question is, would you mind shamelessly plugging your new book and anything else you want people to know about? Oh sure. Yeah, this new book, it's called The Book of More Delights. And Algonquin, Press is doing it. Find people there. They've been very lovingly taking care of this book. Yeah, that's the plug. But I also want to say I'll fund this conversation. It's been, you've asked

questions that have made me reconsider some of my understandings of myself, you know, and that's to me, that's sort of the pleasure of the pleasure of conversations. And it's kind of why I could never be like, and this is what you should do. Yeah, it was really good. Well, that's very meaningful to me, so thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you.

Thanks again to Ross. Great to have him on the show. Go check out his work. Thanks, of course, to you for listening. And after thanking you, I'm going to ask you for a solid. If you want to help me out, you can give us a rating or a review over on whatever podcast player you use. Also check out the new stuff on Instagram and TikTok, been trying out a little almost daily videos about how to do life better. I could use the followers and the feedback. And finally, thank you most of all to

everybody who worked so hard on this show. 10% Happier is produced by Lauren Smith, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davie, and Tara Anderson. DJ Kashmir is our senior producer, Marissa Schneidermann is our senior editor, and Kimmy Regler is our executive producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn from the awesome band Islands Wrote Our Theme. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode. This one is really good. It's with the comedian, Aparna Nancharla. I was written a whole book about an imposter syndrome

and I co-interview Aparna with Dr. Bianca Harris. My wife. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

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