Jan 27

Jan 27 The joy of little joys

It’s as unrealistic as it is, actually, unhelpful for life to be constantly full of joyous events and experiences. There have been countless studies which show that allowing for, and being accepting of, life’s down times and difficulties makes us more joyfully responsive to the good times, and better at enjoying and being grateful for them.

Whilst I of course accept life can’t be lived on a happy high all the time - apart from anything else, think how exhausting that would be - I am a great believer that there are pockets of joy to be found every day, in little pleasures that can be relished in plentiful quantities without any risk of numbing yourself to their heart-lifting delights.

I’m talking about the small, simple actions or experiences that unfailingly make you sigh with pleasure, or lift your spirits, or replenish your joy cup and help to turn a good, middling or bad day, hour or even minute, into a better, happier one.

These micro-moments of delight are, in my book, every bit as important and life-enhancing as their bigger, more significant relatives.

Although our little joys are naturally as individual as we each are, I wonder how many of them are shared by more of us than we realise? What follows is a small selection of my favourite little joys. Do any of yours feature on the list?

Possibly unsurprisingly, two of them centre around my bed.

Clean and crisp

It’s my firm belief that there’s only one thing better than getting into a bed that’s been made up with clean, freshly-ironed sheets (yes, I’m resolutely unapologetic about ironing my sheets, even the bottom one) and thats…

Warm and snug

….getting into one that’s been warmed by an electric blanket. As someone with hands and, particularly, feet that are all too often the nearly-blue side of icy, climbing into a warmed bed on a cold night is a moment of such sublime joy that however bad the preceding day has been, it’s all forgotten in that one instant of complete body and soul warming pleasure.

A tea treat

Call me weird - and you certainly wouldn’t be the first person to do that - but much as I love a cuppa (or several over the course of every day, thank you kindly), there’s a very particular element of the tea-making ritual that gives me a very particular lift. And it’s one I don’t experience very often.

It’s the sound the tea makes being poured from a pot into a cup or mug.

And the reason I experience it so infrequently, is that I rarely make a pot of tea. That’s partly because I’m usually making just the one cup, just for me, and partly because I have a hot water tap, so it’s easy to dispense a single mug full of boiling water.

However, whilst I was away for my recent birthday, I came across a gem of a shop, called The Tea and Biscuit Club, in Arundel

where I bought the little red tea pot in the opening pic. So now I can brew up just a couple of mugs at a time, and revel in that joyous sound as many times a day as I pour myself a reviving/relaxing/restorative cuppa.

Go, go, go

This little joy is one that’s entirely beyond my control, but I can’t tell you what a thrill it gives me when I’m driving anywhere and all the traffic lights on my route are green when I get to them. Clearly that doesn’t happen very often, but, oh, when it does, the fist-pumping delight is hard to beat.

I’d like to say this next little joy is one that I am more in control of, but it appears it’s all-too-frequently one organisational step beyond my capability. Which is why when…

The top fits

…I find the right top to go with the tupperware tub I’ve just filled is a moment of such joyous satisfaction. I mean, how it is possible that there can be so many minute variations in the shape of apparently identical rectangular tubs? And how is it that - unless you have a cupboard the size of a wardrobe in which you can store each one with its lid firmly on it, rather than having to stack the tubs and a teetering separate pile of their lids, stuffed into whatever space you have spare (surely not just me?) - there’s always at least one that doesn’t have a lid that fits it at all?

See now why this seemingly simple task is a source of such joy when I’m actually able to complete it?

Finally, two outdoor joys to finish off this far-from-exhaustive pick of my little joys.

Land and sky

For all that we need to be aware of the dangers of too much of it, for me there’s something magically soothing that happens when I lift my face up to feel the sun on it.

Whether it’s that first bright day with the promise of spring in its warmth, or the dazzling sunshine that bounces off snowy ground, or the contrast of the summer sun on my face and the cool of the sea on my feet, the action of tilting my head so it’s fully facing that welcome ball of yellow in the sky for a moment or two makes me breath out deeply with joy every time.

And when I’m breathing in, there’s little I love more than to fill my nostrils with the scent of freshly mown grass. It transports my spirits to the joy of lazy summer days, lying, sitting or strolling barefoot on soft, springy turf, and the memories of my childhood home where my father took such pride in mowing the lawns with neat lines, and my grandparents seaside house which had a big, mostly lawned, garden leading down to the sea.

Were there any of your little joys in that list? I asked my partner what his favourite little joy was and he didn’t hesitate to answer - “When my golf swing hits the ball in exactly the sweet spot”. Would that be one of yours too? Let me know in the comments and add any more that would be on your list. Let’s see how many we all share!