Suzanne Harrington: Start your own book of delights - it will make January better, I promise

Suzanne Harrington. Pic: Andrew Hasson

Returning home to extreme January after a sunny trip away – a goodbye trip with my kids, who have moved not just out of our house, but to distant continents – feels, I have to say, somewhat bleak.

It’s not empty nest syndrome, something which has long been a fantasy of mine, but the horror of returning to so-called ‘real’ life; even as a fan of Jan – and I am – there’s something a bit wretched about arriving back to an A-Z of battering storms. 

Yanking garden furniture out of the hedge, shivering.

Plus the emotional whiplash of being expected to care about the stupid stuff again – the brown envelopes, the blocked gutters, the parking tickets and tax bills - while really your head is still whizzing about on a moped somewhere bright and free, unblighted by health and safety, or anything resembling adulting. 

Adulting sucks. I’ll never get used to it.

So just write a gratitude list, right? Cultivating gratitude – formerly known as counting your blessings - is the accepted tool to combat gloom. 

But what if you want to do more than merely combat gloom? And what if the very idea of counting your blessings sets your teeth on edge? 

What if actually you’d like to rekindle the joy of faraway sunshine, as Storm Schartzmugel lashes down on your head? How do you do that?

You get hold of The Book of Delights, by American poet Ross Gay. Instead of earnestly listing the stuff you are grateful for – because sometimes you’re just a raging ingrate – you note something that sparked your delight. 

Anything. It doesn’t have to be significant or worthy – in fact, the less worthy, the more delightful. 

A song on the radio. That first cup of coffee. Bumping into a friend unexpectedly. Your favourite socks.

Gay compiled hundreds of frivolous moments of delight into his book; you can do the same. I say ‘you’; I’m really talking to myself out loud here. 

Nothing is too trivial, too unimportant. And you end up with a highly personal collection of joy, which is multiplied upon sharing. What’s not to love?

“I felt my life to be more full of delight,” Gay wrote. “Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight. I also learned this year that my delight grows – much like love and joy – when I share it.” 

He added, “To choose delight is a revolutionary act.” Or, as my Idles t-shirt says, “Joy as an act of resistance.” 

Right then. I’m ready to resist via joy, to harvest moments of delight. 

Being pinged a photo of my daughter wrestling a golden retriever on an Australian lawn. 

Doing a Wordle in two goes. Hearing Sprints’ debut album. Trying Muay Thai for the first time, and experiencing the pure pleasure of kicking and punching. 

Starting Veganuary on a plane, and being pleasantly surprised. Finishing Demon Copperhead, and being blown away. 

My missing bag turning up on another luggage carousel. My partner waiting in Arrivals. Coming home. 

Flashes of joy, of delight.