These aren’t distractions from life; they are life.

Sometimes it just sits beside you, waiting to be seen.

We expect joy to be loud.

The fireworks, the celebrations, the breathless laughter, and the huge “YES” moments that mark life’s biggest turning points. We wait for it in milestones and finish lines. We expect it to be obvious.

But joy doesn’t always announce itself.

Sometimes, it comes quietly. Uninvited. Unscheduled. Unimpressive to anyone else but you.

It shows up in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, when the sun slants just right through the window.

It lives in the deep exhale when the room goes quiet after a long day.

It hides in the last bite of something warm, in a shared glance, in a song you forgot you loved.

Joy is not always the reward for achieving something. It’s often the side effect of presence.

But presence takes practice.

Because we’re trained to chase. To look ahead. To believe that joy is something we have to earn. It lives on the other side of our to-do list. It waits for us after the promotion, the project, the healing, and the transformation.

But joy doesn’t wait.

It exists now, if you’re paying attention.

“I don’t think all the joy has to be wrung from life in a single, ecstatic moment,” said poet Ross Gay. “I think it’s around us, constantly, if we just look.”

But looking takes effort. It means slowing down. It means tuning in. It means not rushing past the good just because it’s small.

We get better at finding joy the same way we get better at anything else by practising. By noticing. By treating it like something sacred, even when it seems silly.

Because the silly things often save us.

The socks that make you smile.
The coffee that tastes exactly right.
The dog is sleeping next to your feet.
The first breath of spring air.

These aren’t distractions from life; they are life.

Joy doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it just sits beside you, waiting to be seen.

So today, pause for a second. Look around. Ask yourself:

What would I miss if it disappeared tomorrow?
What makes me feel quietly alive?

And then linger there.

Not to achieve anything. Not to capture it or post about it. Just to be with it.

That’s where joy begins.
Not in the extraordinary.

But in the ordinary things, we decide to see things differently.

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