It snowed this week. It’s the first snow of the season, which seems strange to me because there was still snow on the ground from last winter when I started working from home because of the pandemic. 2020 will pass without me walking around the oval, called The Bowl, in the middle of the university, something I do almost daily most spring, summer, and fall days when on campus. 2020 is the first year that I won’t have that walk among the stone covered buildings and lush trees, in nine years.
Those walks are simple pleasures, something that can be hard to come by these days, and not always because they’re not there. No, I’m not on campus so I don’t get my walk around The Bowl with my friends and I haven’t sat in a coffee shop to write, something I did a lot while making my way through my last bout of depression, but if I look for them, simple pleasures are still available to me.
The World Series is on and my beloved Dodgers are in it again (they haven’t won in 32 years, but who’s counting). I’m going to watch the whole thing. No political debates, just baseball.
My wife made delicious black bean brownies last weekend.
I have a stack of books, just waiting to be read and warm socks that are fuzzy inside that I can wear, while sitting in my living room reading.
These are simple pleasures. Watching a baseball game. Eating a brownie. Reading a book. My family has stayed healthy and we have abundance in our lives, and those are the big things, but the simple things, those are the things we can turn to to find little bits of joy.
What’s your favourite book? Read it again.
Your favourite movie? Watch it again.
Your favourite pair of socks? Put them on and do your best Tom Cruise in Risky Business.
Make the time and the room in each day to enjoy some simple pleasures. Find that joy.
Featured image courtesy of David Stobbe under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.
