By Anne Gambling
As a writer, I enjoy playing with language. Such that, when re-contemplating a gift received from a friend in late 2019 (a piece of folk art exhorting us to ‘delight in the everyday’) during a 2020 defined and bookended by unexpected and surprising health concerns (societal: covid; personal: cancer), I suddenly saw its message in a new ‘light’. Hmmm, I thought. Why just everyday? Why not every ‘every’? And so a poem was born within the blink of an eye, the space of a breath. A poem to remind me of the every ‘every’ deserving of my attention, to encounter its presence with a view to finding its capacity to delight.
My desire to entertain a bit of whimsy when all around I bore witness to anxiety, despair – expectations of grief regardless or not if any immediately presented (it’s amazing the depth of negative associations people have of the word ‘cancer’; to which the word ‘covid’ fast became its 2020 ally) – is nothing new. I am a perennial optimist, and love sharing my joy of life with nearest, dearest, and beyond (a constant annoyance to one and same). As a child, I had Pollyanna’s ‘glad game’ down pat. Now in my 50s and with my youngest graduating high school, I figured it was time to put pen to paper and confirm to every ‘every’ what I thought.
To supplement the poem pinned to wall, 2020 kept me successfully occupied finding new monikers for the months as a trigger to search out anything but the bad, sad, fad news flooding each everyday. J-months become Joy months (such luck – 3 of them, 91 whole days; and we even get to begin each new year with Joy!); A-months stand for Awe; M-months for Magic, and so on. In my Annie-calendar there is no March 21 to look forward to, for example, but Magic-21, preceded (of course) by 20, and postmarked by a further 10, looking in any/all cranny’d nooks for evidence of Magic in the everyday. Each find I duly record so Magic compounds (like bank interest) with my re-reading or re-telling of yarn. Only a single D month, meanwhile, to close the year, but most happily it is Delight’s own. On, on, 2021!
Plus, in one of those ‘it-just-gets-better-and-better’ moments of fun, I recently realised that each time my Swiss husband says: ‘Can you turn on the light?’ (or some such) he could as easily be saying: ‘Can you turn on delight?’ Sure! I reply. How about 24/7 radiance?
Of course this little unintended wordplay only makes sense if one knows that German has no ‘th’ sound; no matter how perfect a German mother-tongue’s English pronunciation, ‘the’ more often than not sounds like ‘de’, hence … In this way, December 2020’s (delightful) Winter Solstice celeb became a seesawing glad game to toast the returning ‘light of delight’ and ‘delight of light’! Pure mergence, in other words – stellar-cloaked and champagne-giggly.
2020 was one heck of a year, on that we are all agreed. And although now officially ‘history’, something we can talk about in the past tense, I take three presents with me into 2021’s present – covid on a societal level, cancer on a personal level, and delight on a ‘wrap-your-arms-around-the-world-and-touch-every-every-with-your-capacity-for-joy’ level. Who knows how long the first present will remain (with us all) or the second (with my sweet stoic body). But my hope is for the constancy of the (light of) delight and the (delight of) light to ever-walk at my side, prodding me to search out the merest sliver of silver in the lining of every ‘every’ I encounter, staying present to the present of each in/out-breath delightedly breathed as I continue this grand adventure of life in a new year, and beyond. Blessings to all!
DELIGHT: A POEM
delight in the everyday
delight in the everynight
delight in the everywhere, and
delight in the everywhen
delight in the everyhow
surely delight in the everywho too?
so now delight in the everywhat, which and why
c’mon, why not just give it a try!
wander the heights of your own joyous making,
(rocky) mountain mammas in each (delight’d) direction,
revel in the present, express joy in the now,
delight in the precious things simply breathing Life’s Tao,
training each living sense on every wonder they meet …
now! now! please try it: now!
don’t leave Life’s everyday for any other someday (oneday)
because you just might find (by the time you have time)
that the moment has passed
and your clock simply stop-watched –
and you’re just not here (anymore) to delight …
+++++
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