Do It For Delight
Some days I am okay with the concept of dying, and some days I am most decidedly not
It feels lofty to try to capture all that I’m trying to say here in one blog post. I think I have a whole book on this inside of me—one that’s been marinating for a long time and that’s anxious to get out. So let this be a crumb, part of a whole loaf of bread, ready to be ripped into again another time.
Here’s a true thing about me: Some days I am okay with the concept of dying, and some days I am most decidedly not.
I was out walking Pablo the other day, and the sky was gray and my mood was gray. As he poked around the leaves in his insistence to smell the same things he had smelled the day before, I watched water droplets collect on pine needles and stewed on the dismal fact that I’d been flat-out busy all day, but had done nothing that I’d particularly enjoyed. The result was that I was feeling a bit like a robot: useful, but not alive.
It was then that an old, unwelcome thought came into my mind—the stuff existential crises are made of: “Plus, I will die someday.”
I found, at that particular moment, that I was decidedly not okay with that. In fact, it was utterly depressing, and the weight of its truth began to press down on my soul. Pushing, pushing, it was so heavy that I felt my boots could sink down in that muddy ground until I was already half-buried, my fate sealed.
I was bothered by it.
The next day was different, though.
It was a Saturday morning, and Ethan offered to take the kids with him to deliver produce and eat donuts. Once the taillights gleamed in the morning light and I had waved out the window in my pajamas, I sat in the still silence of our home, wondering about the best way to capitalize on my newfound free time.
Should I fold six loads of laundry? Unload and reload the dishwasher? Respond to the growing list of emails I’d been avoiding? Order groceries?
There were a million useful things I could have done in those three hours. But I was tired of being useful. I didn’t want to feel like a robot. I didn’t want to become so consumed by the fragments of my responsibilities that I forgot that this life is meant to be a whole, well-rounded thing of beauty.
So I put on my pants, kissed Pablo on the nose, and hit the road.
I drove directly to Boulangerie, my favorite French bakery in the next town over. As I pulled into the parking lot, my brain began to say, Now Deidre, do you really nee— but I cut her off, too intoxicated by the smell of butter and baked bread to listen to good sense.
I ordered a cappuccino and chocolate croissant and sat alone outside, even though the air was still chilly. I let myself feel the cold on my skin, and my body said, I’m alive.
I tore off a piece of the croissant, and crumbs fell into my lap and hair. The inside was tender and rich, and I rolled it around in my mouth. My taste buds said, We’re alive.
I tucked my phone into my purse, and instead watched some plump little birds hop and chirp along the ground, delighting themselves in bits of muffin and quiche. Daffodils opened their delicate blossoms beside me; a French bulldog sniffed the air. I smiled at his owners, and my soul said, I’m alive.
I didn’t want to become so consumed by the fragments of my responsibilities that I forgot that this life is meant to be a whole, well-rounded thing of beauty.
It was in that moment that my eyes welled up. I remembered once that Oprah said to “Cry up,” to squelch oncoming tears, so I lifted my gaze to the heavens, not wanting to be seen in public crying over croissants and cute dogs.
I realized, all of a sudden, that I was quite literally being ‘delighted to tears.’ The sense of life was so abundant that it was trying to spill out of my eyeballs! I ran to the car and found a pen on the floor, then settled back into my outdoor seat and wrote poetry on the back of my croissant wrapper. I hadn’t intended to—it’s just that I had so much life suddenly churning around inside of me that I needed to get it out, to share it, to make it tangible in two-dimensions!
As I lay in bed that night, the thought of death came into my mind again. This time, though, I wasn’t greeted with a sense of hopelessness or melancholy. Instead I thought, If I lived every day like I did today, I would be ready to die when it was time.
Curious, isn’t it? That over the course of twenty-four hours, my perspective on death could be so drastically different that it could crush me one day, and unphaze me the next? What had caused such a shift?
Delight.
It wasn’t the croissant, exactly, or the bulldog or the daffodils or the cool morning air. It was the momentary suspension of time in which I was allowed to enjoy something without having to earn it, and to be human without being punished for it.
That sudden sense of freedom infused me with such joy that I felt, for a moment, that I had drawn closer to eternity, as though I could envision myself in it and that it was very, very good.
Jesus’ words come to mind now: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 ESV).
When we begin to get depressed about death, it’s because the thief is pillaging us. It’s because he is telling us that all there is to life is what we can earn and accomplish before we die and are forgotten. So we succumb to grind culture and wait for our rewards, but they either never come or are never enough. We work, we fade, our days pass us by. And at the end, I’ve heard that many people feel an overwhelming sense of regret.
But Jesus says that he came to give life. And not just a little life. Not just life for when the laundry is done, or when our inbox is cleaned up, or when we’ve put in 40 hours or 40 years of hard, punishing work. He doesn’t mention such conditions. He just says that he came for us to have life and have it abundantly.
Delight: The momentary suspension of time in which we’re allowed to enjoy something without having to earn it, and to be human without being punished for it.
I imagine that’s why I feel nearest to God when I’m in a state of delight. When I write, when I blow raspberries on Theo’s tummy, when I pick flowers in the yard. It’s because he has offered an abundant life, and I am finally saying, “Why yes, thank you. I’d like to live this life you’ve offered me. And what’s more, I’ll enjoy it.”
That, I believe, is the secret to being okay with death: Knowing that there is life on this side, and life on that side, and Jesus has offered a way for us to enjoy it abundantly on both sides. And when we seize it, allowing ourselves to be delighted to tears by it, we can go to bed at night without an ounce of regret, knowing that when our time comes for life on the other side, we’ll be ready to enjoy that, too.
Delight is ours for the taking. We aren’t robots, for heavens’ sake. We’re humans. And we were designed for abundant life. It makes sense that anything less would fill us with existential dread.
So this week, may my voice whisper in your head as many times as you need to hear it: “Do it for the delight of it, dear friend. Do it for delight.”
Speaking of delight: I am DELIGHTED to share a new Signature Sweatshirt that I created for all the amazing poets here in this community. It says, “Poetry is for Rebels,” and it’s available for preorder, and if you’re looking for a rad Mother’s Day gift, they’ll be shipping out just in time.
This was an eye opener. Thank you!