Delight: Please greatly, charm, enchant, captivate, entrance, enthrall moregladden, gratify, appeal to, entertain, amuse, divert, tickle pink.
I love the word “delight”. I love feeling delight. It’s the closest thing to worship we can get without actually “worshipping”. I can think of many things that delight me. As a mother, my kids delight me in so many ways. My daughter is passionate and even intense at times. That look delights me….it’s part of her beauty and mystery. My son has a way with people that he can sell you on his ideas and products that have you thinking later….. “wait a minute, what just happened that I bought the 60 inch TV”? That’s part of his humor and good nature as he grows into a man of influence. As a grandmother, I am delighted in my grandchildren. My grandson has a triple giggle that is unduplicated and makes you laugh just by his sounds. My oldest granddaughter has very few inhibitions from the way she dresses to how she dances….her favorite color is rainbow (imagine the combinations in dressing herself). The youngest has the pure delight of innocence and curiosity (though exasperating to the adult watching her as she is into everything, including the water in the toilet). As a woman blessed with a great man, I am delighted in him. His masculine prospective amuses me and intrigues me. I am delighted when he is around me. His humor is pure delight and can bring me to the kind of laughter that almost makes you cry. He can bring me delight just by a look. I feel great delight when the birds sing early in the morning, (I just knows they are singing a song of delight to God about another day of freedom and flight).
You’re getting the idea that delight can change our attitudes and even our lives. Being delighted doesn’t always mean you’re having fun, but it does mean you are alive. We seem to be losing the ability to be fully alive and delighted. To experience and identify delight you have to have the ability and habit of living in the present moment (the opposite is being disassociated and living in addictive cycles). I find that most people are worrying about what happened to them in the past; or fearing the future that is uncertain and uncontrollable; or fighting to not feel anything at all and even worse, living in constant anxiety about what others are thinking about them. Anxiety always will steal our joy and delight for life. I am in no way minimizing the extreme pain in those that live with anxiety. I work with many people that struggle on a daily bases with fear and anxiety. It is a fierce battle to overcome these paralyzing thoughts and feelings. These thoughts about delight are to give you a picture of what life was intended to be before the tragedies of life affected us.
As we grow up and become adults (which we all need to do…I guess), we have something happen that isn’t so good, we lose our sense of wonder. Young children get delight out of an ant crawling on the sidewalk or a worm digging its way down into the soil. When was the last time you stood and watched any of the wonders of a bird, a humming bird, a fish swimming in the creek, or any thing in nature? A couple of weeks ago Tim wrote about looking vs observing. People that live in the present and observe have a sense of wonder and are not afraid of mystery. I think we have to fight our own thoughts in order to develop this sense in our culture. We are inundated with computers, iPhones, TVs, keeping up with the Jone’s, and all the general chaos of life. Who even wants to be present, much less has time to be curious, have wonder and observe? Have you ever revisited yourself when you were a child? Can you remember that part of you that was excited, filled with curiosity and intrigued with things, people, nature and just life itself? Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? (from the play “our Town”)
Delight is contagious. I love how Beth Moore puts it, “spread the virus of delight”. Can you be around a person of wonder and observes the details of the moment and not catch it a bit? Can you be around a child that is full of life and laughter and not smile with delight (or at the least have a pang of realization of what your have lost)?
I think those people that are alive, passionate and present in the moment with life, feel delight with the sight of a butterfly flying by the window of their car, seeing a cloud formation that looks like a dragon or seeing a little child running through the sprinkler in their front yard. As a counselor I meet people in my office that have numbed themselves to the simple pleasures of life. Sometimes I give them homework (the dreaded word in therapy) of looking that week for the things that are beautiful. When you are intentional about looking for mystery, beauty, and the delightful parts of life, you begin to open yourself to a whole new world. It takes a conscientious effort to stay present, then to look for beauty for 30 days, to start to form habit strength. If you continue to keep this presence of mind it will take two years to complete the growth a new neuro-path. Change is not easy…..but so worth it to gain a new sense. There are 5 senses that are wired into us, sight, smell, taste, touch and sound……ALL are needed to develop the sense of wonder and delight.
Just talking about this makes me think of the “Zippity Do Da” song. A big part of the ‘delighted sense’ is the music that you listen to and the sounds in your life. I know there are many who will disagree with me, but listening to angry music tends to make us stuck in our sense of darkness about life on earth. I firmly believe that we were not really created for this world of pain and time constraints, but for a world like Eden when it was innocent and eternal. I am reminded of the tragedy of life by music, people’s stories and the reality of my own life. There is no doubt of the reality of life is hard and sometimes even a bit impossible. My heart longs to be set free of this at times. I love music that has an undertone of victory, hope, love, and wonder (music is one of the things that causes us to use both sides of our brain, which is why it moves us ).
I guess my thoughts in all that I’ve just said, is that Delight displaces disappointment in life, displaces anxiety and gives us hope. I challenge you to look for the beauty of life….To observe closely what is going on around you….to revisit the child that had that sense of wonder. Be delighted in the beauty of life. There is nothing like having a paradigm shift in life when you realize that the fruit of delight in life is actually worship and spiritual in nature.
SIGH…….now to go experience my first delight of the day…a great cup of Sumatra Coffee with Sweet Cream (big smile on my face).
What do you find delight in???
By Patti Caparros