Ross Gay — Hope Portal, Episode 7

I have heard in the last few years a question rolling around the world. It goes something like this. How could you be joyful in a moment like this, in a world like this? And the question troubles me because it suggests that joy is a privilege. But joy in human life is a resilience making, life giving birthright of being human. And to suggest that you can't be joyful in a time like this is akin to the idea that you can't be hopeful unless everything has gone right for you. Joy is a companion to hope as a wellspring of resilience. And my wonderful teacher on this is Ross Gay, a poet and community gardener and teacher who brings his own way in to the conviction that we have to know what we love and what delights us. And we have to tend to that as seriously and as fiercely as how we tend to what is broken and what we are called to make better, what we are called to make more just. Knowing what we love and knowing how to take delight is fuel even and especially in experiences of great challenge. And Ross Gay is infectious. His presence is infectious. I'm not sure that we used the word hope in the conversation we had. But hope emanated from it. As I said, he's a poet and he's also a very intense lover and interrogator of words. His work actually reminds me of that Emily Dickinson quote that hope inspires the good to reveal itself. He told me that the etymology of the word delight is both of light and without light which again drives at the deeper meaning of this that as he says adult joy knows that suffering and loss always live close by life and love. And so that knowledge brings what is good and joyful all the more into relief. He actually works really interestingly with his community garden and the complex interplay that is in a garden between death and life and beauty and loss and pleasure season after season after season. So the part of the interview that I want you to hear a little bit of here is about the practice he undertook to write his book of poetic essays called The Book of Delights. So what surprised you in the process of moving through that year and moving through that year looking for delight and writing about delight every day? I mean, many things surprised me, I suppose. But one of the things that surprised me was how how quickly the study of delight made delight more evident. Mhmm. That was really quick, you know. And I wasn't sure, like, I was a little bit like, this can be hard, you know, to just, like, have something delightful happen every day. You know? Yeah. You said somewhere you it's like you developed a delight radar or a delight muscle. Yeah. Well, it seems to me it's a little …