What Does Delight Mean To You? Part One

Why write delight? Perhaps the question should be, why not? We live in a world of overwhelm after all, many different things pulling our attention this way and that, not many of them delightful. 

A couple of months ago I decided to commit to the act of seeking delight. How did this happen? Well, it was as if I were being pointed towards it by the universe. Different prompts in my feed: a chat with Sally Harrop who has been doing her own delight experiment on her Substack for some time, a series of workshops I attended all focused on writing the mundane which felt like a meditation, the seemingly ordinary, and yet... and yet... 

I wanted to create something, a month together where we could switch off from the news and the algorithms and focus on seeking our own delight, which I had quickly realised was all around us – it’s just with all the noise, we forget to tune into it. I tested that month myself first, I wanted to prove what I had intuited, that we could in a month turn our minds to the habit of delight-seeking. I wanted to prove it was a better way to live, just knowing it is there, something quieter and yet more profound to turn our attention to. Comforting, if you like. Delightful. 

Within a week I had proved it to myself: a windy walk spent with a puppy; figs bronzing themselves on a tree in my garden; the smell of a rose. How delightful it was trying to pin these pleasures to a page. It became a challenge each day – where would delight be found today? Sometimes I had to choose which of many delights. 

When I invited others to join me, I did not know if they would see what I had. I created prompts, one for every day of the month, and we joined each week to discuss where we had found delight in that last seven days. Slowly, they too realised it was there for the taking, that we could create even a few minutes in each busy day to turn our attention towards the sun - that delight - even on a seemingly cloudy day. 

There was no pressure from me to write (we have enough pressure already in our every day) but instead some days when it was impossible to make it to the page, a list in our heads would count. That, in itself, is still a mindful act of seeking delight, and that is what we are creating for ourselves here, a meditation, a moment. A bonus is an improvement to the craft of writing, another way to describe the same thing, something a month ago we had walked by and not noticed. Those who have struggled to get to the page for some time found themselves there.

Often we spend our lives trying to find the words to describe the difficult, the traumatic, we can feel it is cathartic to endeavour to do so, and that is indeed true. But we should not dismiss the power of describing the little, the tiny, the ordinary, the mundane, and yes, the delightful. Small happy moments matter as much in memoir and fictional worlds as our day-to-day lives. We sometimes forget this. A month of delight seeking is an excellent reminder. 

I am running this Writing Delight course again in September, so if you would like to join me for a whole month of seeking delight in your every day lives, then I would love you to be there. The commitment is to turn away from screens, the news and social media as much as possible (if not completely) and just for one month turn your attention towards the prompts that appear in your inbox everyday. We meet weekly on a Saturday morning in our ‘delight-seeking clinic’ to discuss the week and do that day’s exercise together. If you can’t make the meet ups you will receive a recording of the session to watch in your own time.

If you have been struggling to get back to your writing, or want the accountability of seeking a regular practice then this is an excellent way to commit to that. It’s also a lovely ‘back to school’ vibe to do it in September once the Summer is out of the way.

Until the end of July, if you are a paid subscriber to White Ink, you can join for that whole month of seeking delight for £109, and if you are a free subscriber the cost is £149. You can sign up by clicking the button that applies to you below. We start on September 1st, I’d love you to join me:

Writing Delight (for paid subs)

Writing Delight (for free subs)

Those who committed to this month seeking delight wanted to put together some thoughts below on what the word means to them. Their words (and their delights) are so beautiful, this will be part one of me sharing them here. Perhaps they will persuade you to switch off from your phone, to look up and around, and find the delights awaiting you each new day, too. They are, after all, always there for the taking.

Here is what Ruth Abrams has to say about delight. You can find her Substack here.

Delight. Delightful. Delightfulness. Is delight a feeling or emotion? If it’s a feeling, what are the emotions it is friends with? A dictionary definition tells us that delight is to please someone immensely, or greatly. I like the simplicity of this description. But is delight ever universal? Is it gendered? Who has access to delight? Is it an act of privilege, rebellion or necessity? And what happens in the shadow of delight? Or perhaps this is too loaded an assumption, that delight can only come as a quid pro quo.

Delight requires constant reorientation, particularly so I would say for women, for whom the likelihood of delight being immediately eclipsed by guilt seems to be ingrained.  But what happens to us when delight feels so far away? Do we need some kind of permission to delight in something? Yes, yes, this is here to be enjoyed, please, be my guest…

Delight for me is something often found in retrospect, and it is usually coupled with a degree of surprise, or it takes the form of something unexpected. Sometimes I feel I should be more delighted by flowers than I am. I love flowers, but the weight of expectation around their beauty is not where I source delight from.

Delight for me, I think, has to have something cheeky about it.

Some kind of oddity or quirk. A bit like when you hear someone sneeze and fart at the same time.  

Or when you share a moment of annoyance with a stranger, equally pissed off by someone playing their music OUT LOUD on the train, and this point of connection allows the feeling of rage to dissipate and mellow, because you are not alone with it.

Or, on your daily walk, you pass the same person twice, doing the same route as you in reverse, and you have that moment of acknowledgement, a brief smile, an ahh yes, you are familiar to me, and I to you. These are the things that delight me.

And here are Fiona Montgomery’s thoughts on delight, you can find her Substack here.

Delight for me is a million disparate things, but all together they make life not just enjoyable but truly wonderful.

Probably delight is joy… I’ll need to think about that.

Once, decades ago, I felt utterly distressed when in a women’s group titled (or at least intended to discuss) Live Your Dream. The task that day was to consider joy and at that stage, going through an intensely difficult family issue, I realised that I couldn’t feel joy. I fought the urge to run from the room in tears.

There were so many good things in my life, but I felt in an impossible situation. I wasn’t depressed but couldn’t at that point see a way forward without causing hurt, yet I too was hurting.

Thankfully for me, that didn’t last too long in the grand scheme of things. It was probably important to realise and ‘do something’ about it.

I suspect people need hope of some sort to feel joy and I relatively quickly regained my ‘never give up’ hopeful philosophy, finding a way through that was ‘good enough’, though still extremely difficult.

While I’ve moved on, I still need to do some things I feel are important in relation to that.

I’m unexpectedly speaking of hard times when thinking of delight, because perhaps delight is a reminder that there are good things to hold onto, with grateful surprise, in even the most stressful situations, whether a wry smile, or full on laughing out loud, despite perhaps feeling grief or pain or fear at the same time.

Overall, I am currently in a good phase (despite certain problems), optimistic, holding onto joy and delight wherever I find them.

I am lucky. Including in having daughters, granddaughters and great grandchildren I adore, my wider family, my amazing friends, lucky in enjoying writing, in loving reading, in basking in sunshine and letting go in dancing (nothing like often enough) and in managing to get tickets my family want for the Edinburgh Book Festival coming in August - and in so many more things - holidays and beaches and sun and sand and laughter. Dancing especially.

Optimist me is hoping to dance on my 80th birthday. Everyone is invited. Meanwhile, here’s hoping Bruce Springsteen will tour soon and my girls and I will get to see him again together.

Last night, my great grandson and his little sister came for dinner, with their mum, and her mum, my older daughter. I am so lucky and so happy and looking forward to soft play fun tomorrow, then holiday time with my younger daughter and one of her two daughters. Both those granddaughters are coming to book festival events with me and my other granddaughter and I will go to a show or two.

I AM DELIGHTED!

Yes, there’s lots that is awful in the world. We must work harder to limit climate change and stop and prevent wars and to build people power for a much fairer economy. Existential challenges are daunting but we can delight in coming together to tackle them. In small wins and changes.

A cacophony of many small, accumulating delightful experiences helps give us the strength to do that.

Delight and joy - I’ll ponder that happy relationship now.

We are privileged, I am sure, with our delights and joys. And they will often be gendered. That doesn’t negate them. We can delight in thinking through the challenges and solutions, and in having a break, a breather, a moment, a holiday, time to ponder and create and love.

And here are some thoughts from Sophie Ellen Jones, you can find her Substack here.

How delight feels

We all have our own take on what delight means, but how does it feel to experience delight? There’s a weightlessness to it; it gives us a lift. It often involves an element of surprise or the unexpected, like a gift. As adults experiencing delight we might gasp, our faces lighting up; young children may squeal. Delight makes us smile, releasing endorphins, dopamine, serotonin. It’s good for our health.

Where I find delight

In the natural world, often in the garden: irises emerging overnight; a red admiral butterfly landing on a plant then taking off again, disappearing out of sight; four goldfinches feeding together; a visiting woodpecker; opening my bedroom window wide to hear the dawn chorus; a family of magpies – two adults, two young – hanging out on the garage roof outside my bedroom window, waking me at 6am with their noisy chattering. (Some might not have found that delightful, I realise.) On a recent evening walk at Aberdeen beach, I watched a pair of swans gliding along on the sea, illuminated by the setting sun. Surprising and beautiful. 

In the company of family and friends, particularly time spent with children. The other day I visited a fancy restaurant with my eight-year-old niece, where we ate decadent chocolate desserts and she told me all about her recent family holiday. The food, setting, company and conversation were a real treat. 

At festivals and gigs, none more so than with family, especially my son. They’re unifying, joyous, and memorable. Last week my son and I saw Arooj Aftab singing with the London Contemporary Orchestra at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. He’d suggested it and I loved being introduced by him to an artist I wasn’t familiar with – a bit of role reversal. We were sitting in the second row from the front and the whole experience was sublime. 

Assorted delights 

Receiving a card in the post from a friend; feeling my body stretching out in downward-facing dog; listening to my niece reading; hearing from a friend I’ve been out of touch with; inhaling the scent of a rose after rain; a friend’s little boy running into my arms for a hug; chancing upon beautiful street art; book post, especially if it’s unexpected; returning home after being away and lifting my cat onto my shoulder, feeling her weight sinking into me as she purrs; seeing the Aurora Borealis for the first time aged fifty, after missing them so many times before; new blooms emerging in garden pots that belonged to my aunt who died three years ago – a pleasing continuity; my first hill walk after hip replacement surgery – Suilven – reaching the summit and being rewarded with views across the peaks of Assynt; visiting a local stone circle this summer solstice with my husband, his daughter, and my mother-in-law. It was a warm, sunny evening and we stood with a glass of fizz admiring the view across Aberdeenshire farmland, while house martins swooped and dived and a cuckoo sang in the distance. 

Delight can be found all around us if we take time to notice it. More often than not it costs nothing at all. 

I’m so grateful to Anna for bringing us together this month, encouraging us to pay closer attention and to share with one another. It’s been a delight!

Thank you to Ruth, Fiona and Sophie for contributing to Part One.

Come and join me in September, and see what delight you discover:

Writing Delight (for paid subs)

Writing Delight (for free subs)

Any questions, drop me a line: annawharton@substack.com or