Delight and Joy Are Survival Mechanisms and Acts of Resistance | Ross Gay

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How rethinking these often twee concepts can change your life and maybe the world.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.‍

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In this episode we talk about:

What got Ross interested in the subject of delight
How noting delight can be a tool for counter programming against our negativity bias
Why Ross argues that there is an ethical component to delight
The benefits of writing by hand
How both using a smartphone and rushing can be delight blockers
The difference between delight and joy
What he means when he refers to the “offenses of joy”
And the connection between grief and joy

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