Written very quickly as part of the InkHaven Residency. More experimental than usual.
Yesterday’s post was a bit on the darker side, so today I’d like to write about something significantly lighter.
There are often moments where, as I go about my day, I pause to take joy in the many wondrous things around me. Here are two of the common ones.
The produce section of supermarkets
One of the things that never fails to make me happy is going grocery shopping as an adult. There are some standard things: being able to make my own choices, and having enough money to be able to afford the food I’d like to buy, and so forth. But I often find it’s the little things that spark the most joy.
Something I think about a lot is going to Berkeley Bowl and just seeing all the fresh produce. The image that comes to mind is the seemingly endless mounds of fresh tomatoes in the middle of winter. In a sense, it’s a very small and mundane thing. The tomatoes really aren't expensive or notable, they’re fresh tomatoes in the end.
But really, the fact that fresh tomatoes aren’t expensive or notable feels, in itself, certainly noteworthy enough to notice and take joy in. Our society is wealthy enough to have grocery stores with a dozen varieties of tomatoes that are slight variations on each other, all available out of season, either grown via greenhouse or imported from Mexico, and delivered via modern shipping from where they are grown to where I live. Not only that, we’re wealthy enough that grocery stores can just put the tomatoes out in public, with the correct expectation that people will pay for them.
The tomatoes themselves do bring me joy (especially when I eat them), as do the supply chains that enable them. But more than that, the thing that brings me joy is the knowledge that I’m fortunate enough to live in a time and place that is very privileged by the standards of history. It's not a bad place to be; it is, by all standards, a comfortable life in a fortunate time to be alive.
Divine grace between people
Sometimes, I interact with people, and I’m reminded of how good people can be. There are many things that remind me of this: the ambitious 20-year-old, fresh to the Bay Area and determined to do what it takes to do good; my friends, who despite all their busy jobs still take time to maintain their friendships with each other and with me; the drivers who wait for me as I cross the road; and so forth.
But one thing that almost always brings me joy is when people exhibit what Scott Alexander once called divine grace:
But consider the following: I am a pro-choice atheist. When I lived in Ireland, one of my friends was a pro-life Christian. I thought she was responsible for the unnecessary suffering of millions of women. She thought I was responsible for killing millions of babies. And yet she invited me over to her house for dinner without poisoning the food. And I ate it, and thanked her, and sent her a nice card, without smashing all her china.
Please try not to be insufficiently surprised by this. Every time a Republican and a Democrat break bread together with good will, it is a miracle. It is an equilibrium as beneficial as civilization or liberalism, which developed in the total absence of any central enforcing authority.
In the community around me, I often see people who strongly disagree with each other still managing to not only be civil but come together and partake in meals and activities. There are people who think that a large number of their friends are actively destroying the world, while those friends think the first group of people are holding back progress out of Luddism, and yet both groups can still come together at LightHaven for events, or work as colleagues, or even become close friends. The fact that these disagreements, however bitter, do not cause them to come to blows often feels like nothing less than divine grace. Even when I wonder whether this comes with a cost, I still take joy in the little moments of grace that allow erstwhile foes to live together in peace.
Since yesterday’s ended with a quote, it seems fitting to end today’s with a quote as well, from Jack Gilbert’s “A Brief for the Defense”:
“We must have / the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless / furnace of this world.”
Despite all the issues in the world, and all the suffering and insanity that exists and must be fought against, I still wish to be the kind of person who’s stubborn enough to take joy in the mundane but fantastical things that surround us.
Discuss