The Art of Marveling
5 ways to cultivate a mindset of delight (even in a cruel world)
I woke up this morning and hated myself.
For waking up 20 minutes later than usual.
Sleeplessly, I check my email. It’s the 1st of the month. My new lease has started. I hurriedly navigate to the payment portal as if it’s 11:59pm and I’m risking a late fee. I’m moving so fast and so out of sorts I pay with a credit card instead of direct transfer of funds from my bank, incurring a 3.5% convenience fee which amounts to $60.
2 strikes against me and I haven’t even gotten out of bed.
I contemplate giving up. But force myself out of bed to get to the gym. As I pull on my day old sweatshirt, a hot pink piece from Gap Factory that has been on my mind for months, I spy a big round blot of what looks like oil. How? When I just washed it yesterday for a different stain.
I huff and stumble into the kitchen to fill up my water bottle. Is the universe trying to get me to quit? When it knows I can’t afford (literally) to quit?
I realize last night I did not pull the kitchen blinds down. As I fill my water bottle, I have a perfect view of the siding of the house next door.
I marvel at how yellow the sunlight looks on the grey siding, emphasized by a draped yellow power cord. The siding is usually a simple blue grey, yet the sun has chiaroscuro-d it in its own beautiful way. It’s somehow Art.
City dwellers bemoan the lack of views from the apartment windows. I am among them. In fact, before the election, I wanted badly to escape to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Views like this don’t compare to the mountains and yet, I am happy. The grey siding of the house next door compels me to keep going.
Julia Cameron says, “The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
The capacity for delight feels like a gift my overactive mind and imagination has given myself. From being the quiet shy kid watching everything and everyone to the aware young woman surviving in a city to who I am now, the professional writer recovering from burnout, unable to stop from seeing a story in everything. I gave that to myself. Now it helps me survive.
Can you let the world give you reasons to keep going?
As small as the siding on the house next door? Or the way a lost set of keys sits on a cobblestone? Or the awe of being in the right place to catch the sunrise just so over the line of morning traffic?
If it is a low point in your life, in your community, in your world, can you allow your marvel to coach you through?
Marvel tells me, “These low points are not stagnant. They are currents because everything is always moving. You still have moments of laughter. You still glimpse a smile. The world falls apart and yet you must find ways to delight in living so that you can survive.”
Can you let her say the same to you?
Here are 5 ways to introduce more marvel and wonder into your life:
Give yourself opportunities to marvel. Walks are the best way to do this. Undistracted ones usually without headphones. The world, even your small sphere, is ever changing. If you have the opportunity to travel, even just an hour outside of the usual sphere of your world, you will see the way the world shifts. You do not need to travel or to walk, though, to cultivate the skill of marveling. I do much of my marveling through my office windows. I spend my time people watching, bird watching, tree watching (side note: let’s make tree watching a thing). But there are even things within your own home you can marvel at. The color of your dinner, the way light hits the wall at a certain time of day, the sound of the collar of the golden retriever who lives upstairs jangling in the stairwell.
Take a picture (if you can). Add it to an album on your phone. Hell, print them out and hang them on the fridge. Find ways not to forget these images. The little joys and things you find beautiful will add up to massive landscapes, a whole world of awe and wonder.
This picture cannot possibly capture how majestic this moment in the sun was. Keep a written list of sensory moments. Not everything is capturable in a photo. Just recently, I was struck by an older couple biking in the park and their conversation which whipped past me in a whirlwind. I took to my Notes app and dictated the moment so as not to lose it. You can do the same. Or use a small notebook. Just make sure it’s somewhere you won’t lose it. The act of note taking can help solidify memories, sometimes even better than a photo can. If you’ve taken a photo, the camera often cannot capture what feelings an image evoked. Like trying to photograph the moon or the sun in the sky. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes a picture needs a thousand words to be remembered.
When you trip, laugh. Or drop something. Or something small goes awry. These are not moral failings. They are human inconveniences. And they can be funny and ridiculous, your own personal slapstick routine. It may sound odd, but moments like these let me marvel at my humanness. How perfectly ordinary and extraordinary I am. How much care I deserve to give myself. And what a treat it is to be my own Donald O’Connor. This levity leaves space or a trip or dropped object to be more surprising than frustrating.
I love this movie, I love this man, I love this song. Remind yourself that single moments make up a life. It’s easy to think to be wondered and awe by mere moments of our lives is hackneyed. Even saccharine or naive when the world around us has been built (or deconstructed?) to give us the constant creep (or slap in the face?) of existential dread. To be so bemused by a book in a Little Free Library or the squeal of a dog desperate to be off-leash for pets that it somehow makes life a little better. However, I take to heart what writer Annie Dillard once wrote: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Of course, not every moment is worth writing home about. Not every day will be good. But the intention to live our days with curiosity and warm affection for what might surprise us makes up a life that, when the chips are down (in hell, perhaps?), we can cling to these singular moments. These grey slats of the house next door. And remember just how exquisite and delightful our little worlds can be. How all our little worlds can help make a big one a little less…dreadful.
The world won’t always be kind. We will all be pulled, “hither and thither by circumstances,” as Herman Melville so eloquently put. Moments of wonder do not have to be a privilege of a good day, an easy day, a day where everything goes well. Even in the worst of times, there are smiles.
Make it easy on yourself for your smile to be among them.
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In Love Letters, I explore the rage and joy of being a woman, the truth in contradiction, and the profound hidden in the pedestrian. If this piece resonated with you, tap the heart below. If you want it to resonate with others, consider restacking or sharing with your friends. And if you’d like to support my work further, the best way is by becoming a subscriber.