242. Why Name Delights

Usually, I make the photos on the top of each post smaller than this one, but not today. This essay will go live twenty-six years after the photo above, taken (obviously) at our wedding on August 16, 1997. We took dance lessons in preparation for the big day and had a great time whirling around to Frank Sinatra's I've Got the World on a String. I still love the song, the dance, and the guy I'm staring at in the photo. Not a bad run so far. In fact, a delightful life.

Have you read Ross Gay's The Book of Delights? The mother of one of the students in the Class of 2025 gave me the book last year. (Thanks again, EJ!) I don't remember if she gave it to me during a particularly tough time for the class or if she saw it and thought, "Wowza, does Carita ever need more delight in her life." Either way, great gift. Probably proving her point, I didn't have time to read the book until summer. Ah, vacation!

I'll tell you, this book of essays is not any of the genres that generally (pronounced genre-ly in this sentence) pull me in. I like long fiction while it's short non-fiction, yet I loved reading it. Here are a few reasons I'm going to recommend that you find your way to its pages.

First, it's, well, to borrow his word, delightful. Gay spent a year handwriting one delight per day, a habit that wired his brain to seek out delight. In my post about why I started taking and sharing Hotchkiss365 photos, I discussed how I have similarly wired myself to search for images that fill my cup. If you've never done any kind of long-term happiness project, I highly recommend taking one on. If you need suggestions, HMU (as the kids say, or maybe they don't, but using text-isms sparks my joy).

Second, when we share our delights, we find overlaps. It's one thing to write or ponder privately about what brings me joy, but it's second-level to share those ideas. On the outside, I don't have much in common with Mr. Gay, but having read his delights, I know that we both love gummy bears, Botan Rice Candy, birthdays, and fireflies. We're both vegetarians (or maybe vegetarian-adjacent). If I ever cross paths with RG (not my father, the author/other one), I'll have these commonalities in my mind. We'll be that much closer.

I've written about the nadir of my first year as a class dean, so I won't retell that story, but I will remind you that one of the ways our grade worked to prevent such ickiness in the future was to try to get to know one another better. Sharing delights is a great way to do that as people generally don't hate on people in whom they see aspects of themselves.

Third, some of his delights didn't exactly align with mine, but they still evoked delightful associations for me. He used the phone number 867-5309 in one essay. If you're old enough, you know that number. If you're old enough AND you went to Francis Parker in Chicago, you remember the Senior prank mural, "Generic Private School," with the barcode 312-867-5309. Hysterical. (I couldn't find an image of the photo online. It happened well before everyone had a camera at all times.) While Ross Gay didn't grow up in Chicago at the same time I did or attend the same school I did, his story brought up this long-stored memory. To put it another way, Ross Gay has my number. Delight.

Fourth, he's got some doozy-powerful lines in there. I'll give you two of them:

• In a section about watching someone who is dancing without a care in the world, perhaps as I was doing twenty-six years ago today (a moment preserved in the photo above), Gay writes, "In witnessing someone's being touched, we are also witnessing someone's being moved, the absence of which in ourselves is a sorry, and a sacrifice. And witnessing the absence of movement in ourselves by witnessing its abundance in another, moonwalking toward the half and half, or ringing his bell on Cass Street, can hurt. Until it becomes, if we are lucky, an opening"(235). We need more such openings in our lives. Let's find them.
• When writing about a basketball backboard that doesn't fit the usual dimensions or align with his ideas about essential back-board-ness, Gay says, "delight doesn't truck with ought. Or should, for that matter"(251). Yes, that. Let's not live waiting to be happy until we find the right object in the right configuration. Let's play ball now.

I love the idea that other people can't pick our delights for us. We can't push people into delights. We can find our own way and open the window, the door, the mirror to share our delights. We can delight in others' delightfulness. It's all totally and completely delightful.

Want to share a delight or a thought about the nature of delight? Please do so in the comments.