lowering the suspicion that what’s arriving is undeserved, resisting the reflex to bolt the door just as something beautiful comes knocking.

It made me wonder: what other windows in my life am I forgetting to open? What joy is within reach, waiting only for me to notice the latch? Some opportunities for bliss don’t require effort. They just require remembering the second window even exists.

Psychologists have a name for this: the upper limits problem . Each of us carries an invisible ceiling for how much joy we’re willing to let in. Cross it, and the alarms start to sound, so we pick fights, invent crises, fall suddenly ill, anything to tug life back down to the safer, lukewarm bath of “fine.”

bite the peach

Joy moves like weather, sudden, undeserved, soaking everything it touches.

Most of us hesitate at the threshold, trying to decide if it’s safe to step into the light. But joy doesn’t linger for deliberation. It passes through, brief and dazzling, and what it leaves behind is not possession but trace: the shimmer of having been met.

It... See more

"My Uncle...taught me something very important. He said that when things are going really well we should be sure to notice it. He was talking about very simple occasions, not great victories. Maybe drinking lemonade under a shade tree, or smelling the aroma of a bakery, or fishing, or listening to music coming from a concert hall while standing in

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Sherry Ning wrote recently about this exact phenomenon in her piece how lucky are you allowed to get:

When I ask my friends how things are going and they’re doing well, they get shy. Most people can tolerate only a moderate dose of happiness before they begin to self-regulate. They grow suspicious of their own good fortune like they’ve stumbled upon... See more

Essays often begin in heartache, something unsettled, but as I follow it, the ache cracks open into something that doesn’t erase the heaviness but makes it breathable. When I write abstractedly about my own heartbreaks, it feel raw, almost indulgent to share. But then come the replies. Sometimes strangers tell me my words had helped them love... See more

I want joy to feel like peaches and pomegranates: sticky, luscious, childlike, a reminder that bliss is our default state before we learned to distrust it.