Want to enjoy your kids (and life) again? Let these 7 doors to delight light your fire

A friend once asked me how I knew what color I wanted to paint my wall.

Little did I know she was asking me about love.

It was the 90s, so it was a shade of peach on one, and periwinkle on the other.

I said, I just choose what I like.

She looked puzzled.

I think about that moment a lot. How often women, especially, just don’t know what we like.

Which is a way of not knowing who we are, of being cut off—from ourselves, the world, other people.

I’m lucky. I tend to know what I like. After all, I was born on what Joost Elffers, of the Secret Language of Birthdays calls the Day of the Decision Maker. I’m also a writer, a Zen student, someone who’s always been drawn to self-study. So it makes sense that I would be at least somewhat tuned into my desires, and my delight.

But there’s more. As I’ve come to learn these past many years of studying the science of attachment, a secure attachment—no matter how messy—grows out of delight.

Mary Ainsworth, the OG queen of attachment theory, used the word “delight” as a technical term. It was the most commonly shared attribute she saw in the securely attached pairs she studied in Uganda and Baltimore, including all the imperfect ones (which is of course all of them).

Which is to say, attachment security can be boiled down to this one thing: someone, somehow, somewhere, delighted in us. Someone saw us as the apple of their eye.

AND, in order to do delight in us, our parents had to know how to delight in and of their experience. They had to feel connected to their own pleasure, at least a little!

Not in some cartoonish, perfect, schticky way, but in our caregiver’s very human, very them way. And not all the time, but enough of the time that we felt it.

And that’s the main thing: someone’s delight in us helps us feel our own delight.

Attachment security helps us feel.

So, since people often ask me what to do if they fear that they’re not securely attached, and thus might not be raising securely attached children (which is unlikely for people asking about attachment, since the hallmark of the secure adult is in fact valuing attachment!), I say—let’s just focus on delight. What it is and how to find it.

Some of us come by delight honestly, but for those of us who don’t, or who just need a reminder, here are 7 Doors to Delight that I like to open on the reg. And for the sake of our collective diminished capacity, and the shame so many of us feel about it, I’m going to keep high-brow delights such as Jane Eyre, outsider art, WWII history, and any other refined nook or cranny for another time, and focus here on the basics.

1. Light: See how the light changes in your house now that the leaves have fallen? You may or may not like it (I’m not a fan of bright November light because it reveals more of the schmutz on the floor), but just notice it. If you keep paying attention to light and the way it changes, and the way it changes you, I guarantee you’ll find a certain quality that delights you more than another. Overhead v. candles. Dusk v. dawn. Christmas lights v. floods. You get the idea. Light your fire by paying attention.

2. Flavor: In our family we love to repeat our friend’s story of the Italian woman who asked her husband to turn off the jazz as they ate pesto because it was “too much” (said in a glorious Italian accent). That’s a woman after my heart! I’m actually part of the 14% of the population who hates cilantro, which means I’m also a “supertaster,” meaning I have more taste buds than you cilantro-accepters (I just can’t!). So I know the difference between social eating, and serious flavor delighting. And it’s hard to do both at the same time. But let’s try! Next time you and your honey are sharing a bag of sour cream and onion chips, washed down with that caramel acidity of a Coke Zero, let it in. Delight. Oh yes. There it is.

3. Scent: As much as I love sitting in meditation most mornings, the scent of the Viva Pine incense (available at The Monastery Store) is a major draw to getting my butt out of bed and onto my cushion. And I love it when I’m away from my house and smell my clothes and notice they smell like incense. I also love the smell of high-quality patchouli, and have a patchouli-scented candle next to my bed, which melts a little during the summer and releases just a tiny bit of delight. I have one in my car, too. I happen to love my car more than life itself, but if I didn’t my little bit of scented pleasure would go a long way. I love the way my dogs smell. Especially their snouts. The sugary milk smell of Azalea’s baby breath stays with me, 14 years later. What scents turn you on? Don’t believe the hype. You really can live on fumes.

4. Order: Azalea swears up and down that she likes her room messy, and yet every time I slink in there and make her bed and pick up her socks and clean off her desk, she is—you guessed it—delighted! Oh! She’ll say…I just love it when my room’s clean! I know things are INSANE right now. We’re all on top of each other, we’re cranky as hell, Trump is STILL president, and we’re terrified of getting sick. You might be astonished by how delightful it is to clean out your silverware drawer. Just take it all out, dump the tray and clean out the specks of who-knows-what, and put it all back. You don’t have to worry about getting rid of anything, even if it doesn’t spark joy. Just refresh. Tidy. Create a little order. Delight. Oh, and make your bed. And notice how your body feels.

5. Color: It doesn’t get much more subjective than color. I love most pinks, but I hate purple. I don’t like green, unless it’s in the chartreuse family, or leaning toward turquoise. But I would never buy a turquoise couch, unless it was closer to teal and kind of mid-century ish. And in the 8o’s I loved forest green, and it’s almost making a comeback in my heart. What does ANY of this have to do with your kids? The more we’re connected to the subtle shades of our own desire, the more we can appreciate their subtle states of our kids and who they are. It’s not about judging or trying to change them, but more just…oh, there he goes again, in his navy blue mood. I can see it! I can feel it!

6. TV: I’m sorry, but I just love watching TV, alone or with my loved ones. Real Housewives, Sopranos, Ozark, the Brady Bunch. S-U-C-C-E-S-S-I-O-N! I don’t love movies nearly as much, but the ones I love (the Piano! Knocked Up! The Wrestler! Do the Right Thing!) send me into swoons of delight. And remember, from an attachment point of view, self care IS other care. Delight is like a good casserole: it travels very well.

7. Trees: We have to take down some trees because they’re dying, and dangerously close to our house, so we invited a tree guy over to help us decide and to do the deed. He surveyed our land, our trees, and spoke lovingly of this one, and that one. One great thing about trees is that they draw our eyes up, and out of ourselves. Delight is funny. It’s both lit from within, but inspired by beautiful, majestic things. Trees are a good place to start.

Never in a million years would I imagine that I would be rooting for delight. I mean, I love the dark side. I live there, and I own it. Which is, I guess, another form of delight.

But there has never been a harder job than being the parent we want to be, and these days—forget it! My hope is that I’ve convinced you to give delight a shot. If you find it hard to do it for yourself, then do it for your kids.

You might be surprised at how quickly your light catches fire.