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Things That Fill Me With Joy

  • Books.  All the books.  Terry Pratchett, Roger Zelazny, Ursula le Guin, Ruth Ozeki, Garfield, Neil Gaiman, Iain M. Banks… and sometimes, all the awesome books by writers who I’ve met and are also awesome… all the books, but all the writers and all the readers too.
  • Kids, together.  Boys, girls, every race and creed.  Kids before society tells them that people are different from each other.  Kids who don’t yet think they need money to get by, and it’s obvious that you should help others, and it’s obvious that we are all equal.  Kids – we’ve kinda screwed up the world.  I’m putting a lot of hope in you that you can fix it….
  • Space exploration.  Because the universe is vast, and we are tiny, and the act of exploration gives us new discoveries and asks us questions about who we are, and who we want to be, and that too is amazing.
  • Practically everything made by Pixar ever.  Especially Wall-E and Up.  Honourable shout-out to How To Train Your Dragon and huge thumbs up to Kung Fu Panda.  “Stairs, my old nemesis….”
  • Large skies.  Sometimes in a city you forget how big the sky is.  Sometimes you get a moment to look up, and remember, and I always find myself smiling when I do.
  • Change.  It gives me hope that I have changed a lot in the last few years; it gives me joy that others have changed too.  It implies that we are not fixed quantities, and we can make up for our mistakes, and that free will is a far deeper and more profound article than we ever really gave it credit for.
  • Gym equipment in parks.  I never use gyms, I never really use the stuff in parks.  But hey, in this modern age in which your physical body is increasingly an indicator of your average salary and living standards, the fact that there’s even a nod towards some equality in fitness opportunity in some limited places perhaps, makes me smile.
  • Solar panels.  Northern Ireland did remarkably well for this, when I went visiting recently.  The technology’s got a way to go, but for every solar panel on every roof there’s a family underneath it not merely generating some of their own energy, but thinking and caring for the world as a whole, and by implication the society that lives within it.
  • Stand up comedy.  I mean… obviously….
  • Singing with people.  I’m a terrible singer.  That does not stop me trying.
  • Learning stuff.  Big thumbs up for learning escrima at the moment, but also a huge nod towards the ridiculous amount of podcasts I listen to.  This week I learnt about the wooly mammoth, thefts on fly-trap nursaries in North Carolina, the history of salsa, the life and death of Lorca, colour blindness and Narnia, the history of the baby incubator, and everything you never wanted to know about Louis XIV’s anal fistula.  Ah the world… endlessly engaging…
  • Colour.  Paintings, yes, and bright clothes and all that… but also light.  The combinations of colours in the air, on skin and objects, light itself just makes me happy.  It’s just a pity that getting the light to a situation where it can make me professionally happy is sometimes such a pain in the backside….
  • Marvel’s current team-up with Netflix.  Daredevil, Jessica Jones… I am ready, Luke Cage.  I’m clinging to the edge of this seat like nothing you can imagine….
  • The smell of new places, and the smell before, and after rain.
  • Laksa.  For those who don’t know, it’s a kind of Thai soup with everything in it.  When I eat it, it’s a bit of a danger zone around my bowl, as I tend to get gloop everywhere, but it is basically the taste of my happiness.
  • The excellence of my friends, and much of the time too, the excellence of people I haven’t met yet.