My mom once told me that one of the core sensations of joy is the feeling you get when you scan a room of people, and as you catch eyes with a friend, their face ‘lights up to see you.
It’s wonderful that in the ancient Hebrew blessing, it says, "the Lord bless you and keep you…, May his face shine upon you…”. How cool is that?
Those light-up moments are minuscule in time, but nonetheless magical.
When my one-year-old’s face lights up to see me, it is the best part of the day.
I turn a corner, his gaze meet mine, and it’s pure sunshine.
The whole world fades away.
He grins with his six teeth, and shouts, ‘dadad!’, and starts crawling my way, laughing.
Delight
These themes of lighting up and joy speak of a word I found delightful: delight.
To delight in something is to take great pleasure in it.
It’s about beholding, basking in, celebrating something that has captured our attention and our affection.
Delight is not a forced thing; it is a reaction from the heart.
Kids do it well. Wonder and awe is their bread and butter.
Things like christmas, snowfall, and forts used to be the objects of my delight.
The way the rain would collect in the sides of the street and the leaves that floated down.
The way a hug from grandma felt… or the surprise knock on the door from a friend, asking to play.
I delighted in things because they were wonderful!
But along the way, as I grew up, my wonder for life around me lessened.
Life got rocky, I experienced disappointments, and my defense mode turned on. I experienced painful moments, disappointment, loneliness.
In our journey, there are things along the way make us start to distrust people, the world, and lose the joy we had in meeting others, or even the people around us that we know well.
Our ability to connect to others can be threatened to diminish.
It’s almost like we can lose our delight in people and life around us.
I am always struck by the lyrics, “‘may we never lose our wonder’” by Amanda Cook, as if it recalls me to a time when I use to see the world in a more beautiful way.
Life can get lackluster in many ways, and one of the most dangerous ways is when we lose our wonder in the people around us.
However, during my years traveling, learning from others, and experiencing God, things began to change.
There is now something I like to practice that makes me smile every time I say it:
The Art of Delighting in People.
Because I grew up around Christians, I learned from a young age that loving others was a really good use of time on this earth.
But it was unclear exactly how to do it.
All I knew was, God loved us, and he loved the people around us.
And somehow, that love was supposed to then flow from me.
I tried to force it.
There used to be a lot of ‘should’s’ in my life.
But along the way, through different experiences with God and with others, I started to learn that, as I saw people differently, I started to treat them differently. That when I became a good receiver, I started to be a better giver to others.
I found myself in awe a lot, and it opened my eyes!
Yi Mei’s Awe Walk
Ok so I thought this was FASCINATING. I hope you will too.
In 2023 a study was conducted around the topic of awe.
After collecting thousands of awe stories from all around the world, researchers sorted them into eight categories, which they called the Eight Wonders of Life:
Moral beauty
Collective effervescence (shared actions like dancing or singing together)
Nature
Music
Visual design
Spiritual and religious awe
Life and death
Epiphanies
I read about this study in The Anxious Generation, in a chapter explaining how phones/social media distract/remove us from the spiritual part of our being. The author Jonathan Haidt, albeit an atheist, wrote the most beautiful chapter on spirituality.
He includes an anecdote of Yi-Mei, a student in Jonathan’s New York University Flourishing Class.
After learning about this 2023 study and the researcher’s background story, she and her classmates were assigned a 30 minute walk in Central Park, without their phones, and instructed just to be fully present.
Jonathan writes, “They were some of the most beautiful writings I’ve read from my students in 30 years.”
Yi Mei’s experience really got my attention. Listen for the art of delighting in people:
‘I was so overwhelmed with how beautiful the park seemed in the spring that I took time sitting on a bench contemplating it's beauty and finding moral delight and affection toward the people that I see walking around, smiling at each of them as they look at me.
It felt as if the experience of beauty and awe made me more generous and drawn into the present. The petty concerns of the past suddenly felt dull, and to worry about the future felt unnecessary because of how secure and calm I felt now. It was like I was experiencing a stretch of time and saying to myself and my anxiety that, “everything will be OK”. There was also a swarming feeling of happiness and simply wanting to connect with and talk to people.”
I love that a walk in nature gave Yi Mei new eyes for the people around her.
I read that and had to put the book down for a second and guffaw.
I resonate with Yi-Mei’s experience in the park.
Come to think of it, there were certain awe-inducing things that made me more grateful and more aware of the people around me.
Many of those eight categories I have experienced, but #6 has hit hardest when it came to love.
Belovedness
God’s love has given a new lens for life. Some of the times, it was when I was deepest in a moment of prayer, being grateful that God was with me, and being aware that God loved me.
I’ll try to explain my awe experience:
Once I was aware that God loved me, it was an intoxicating feeling. It was as if the whole universe knew my name.
After that thought had landed, I was also aware that the whole universe knew the name of the person next to me.
That the person next to me was beloved!
They, like me were chosen, precious, and darling - the apple of God’s eye.
I found that when I was aware of someone’s belovedness, a smirk appeared on my face… “do they know?” “Has anyone shown or told them today that they are loved?”
It began a fun season in my life when i was growing in awareness of the delightful nature of people. Reading Yi Mei’s awe-walk story felt similar.
She just wanted to connect with people more!
All eight of those awe-categories are worth exploring. I’m tempted to print them somewhere in my house to remind myself of the ways I can experience wonder.
I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about the Art of Delighting in People. In later writings, I’d love to share more ways I’m learning to delight and share delight. But for now, just have a think about it.
Be warned… once you're delighting in people… You can't help but share your delight. Joy will be shared, smiles will be shared, new conversations and connections.
That's where the fun comes, where loving people doesn’t come with agenda.
You just think people are delightful.
Have fun.
-Josh Caliguire