Let it be messy; notice the goodness
And watch the goodness expand
I keep having days where something ridiculous goes wrong and throws the whole train off the tracks.
One night last week, I went to Trader Joe’s at 5:45 pm to buy something to make for dinner. Lacking any meaningful inspiration, I raided the frozen aisle for a variety of options, hoping something would strike my fancy by the time I got home. As I waited in line to pay, I texted David to preheat the oven and was thrilled with the efficiency of this evening without a dinner plan. Look at me winging it!
LOL! How cute! If only I could pause time in that moment of carefree joy.
I didn’t have my wallet!
Remember how it was 5:45 pm, I was buying dinner, and everything I put in my cart was frozen?!
“The trick isn’t to love your life when it’s perfect. The trick is to cherish the messy beauty. Even if sometimes it’s really kind of excessively messy.” - from Catherine Newman’s Catastrophic Happiness
Years ago, soon after reading Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, I began a practice of capturing my own delights. At the end of each day, I’d write down something joyful from the day. My diligence ebbed and flowed, as did the scope of each moment I captured. But as I look back on the practice overall and how it’s shaped me, I realize that it’s profoundly affected how I engage with and notice the world.
The past few years have been very hard – for many big-picture, societal reasons (a global pandemic, so many fires and floods, cultural and political division, whatever utter madness is happening right now, need I go on?) and closer-to-home, within-my-family reasons.
And at the same time, we have overwhelming joy and goodness in our lives. And guess what? The act of noticing alters the thing being observed. Almost as soon as I began my practice of noting moments of joy, my list of joyful moments expanded.
Once you start noticing the good that already exists, it will become easier to continue seeing the goodness. Instead of relying on external validation or social media for micro dopamine hits all day, what if, instead, we turned the act of noticing joy into a personally supportive dopamine feedback loop?
Please note that I am not saying you should gaslight yourself. When life is heavy and hard, feel those feelings and reach out to trusted friends and/or professionals for support. And you can choose to find beauty and joy in the depths of despair. Two things can be true! And the more you make that choice to seek out the good, the easier it becomes to find.
The instance of my forgotten wallet at Trader Joe’s was annoying, but I made it home with the groceries only 25 minutes later than initially planned. We had a regular, uneventful evening, and David and I laughed about it later while eating the add-on treats I bought in my second check-out round. It was just one scene from a day and week full of goodness. 💚 ✨
Where have you noticed goodness in the beautiful mess of your life? Tell me in the comments!