Over a decade after my grandmother’s death, her wisdom remains a guiding force in my life. Once, when she was in her late eighties and I was in my forties, roughly the same age she was when I was born, I asked her what her favorite age so far had been.

“Fifty-five,” she said.

I cannot recall what prompted the discussion, but at the time I believed she responded as she did to be generous, to give me something to look forward to. Then, when I was in my fifties, I began to consider that perhaps she had said it earnestly, that she sincerely believed there was something magical about this stage of life, some deeper way of being that was knowable only from this vantage point. It was also a time in my life when more and more of my friends and family were sick or dying, when, like a grassy field in the aftermath of a storm, the colors of my life were particularly intense, as if I were seeing everything for the first time, the past and the present. I was firmly engrossed in the business of living while keenly aware, for perhaps the first time, of how fragile it all was. I wanted to mark this year in some way, to take note, and somewhere along the way, I began to realize I was chronicling my experiences, yes, but also reseeing and reshaping my perceptions as I wrote about them.

I realize that, more often than not, my life has offered examples of what not to do versus what to do (ask anyone who knows me well—my family, my closest friends), so I hesitate to be too instructive here, to assert that I now know the secret to embracing this stage of life. Still, the essays here are my attempts at capturing the joyful experiences that were uniquely mine during this year yet somehow, hopefully, point to something more universal, a way of approaching midlife that honors and cultivates surprise and delight.

Each day during my fifty-fifth year, whenever I had a free moment, between teaching classes or while in my car waiting for the rain to stop or standing at the kitchen counter as my coffee slowly brewed, I jotted down my impressions of simple, everyday things that struck me as beautiful or humorous or intriguing: a particularly delectable cup of Swedish crème from a local bakery, an encounter with a stranger on a trail or at the grocery store, a mother possum carrying her young on her back, a male goat in the throes of romantic passion, a convoluted phrase in a student essay, and so on. I see now that, as I wrote about teaching, running, listening to music, traveling, and so on, I was writing about those ordinary moments that add up to a life. The process was the opposite of peeling an onion. It was the unpeeling of an onion, if you will. Or perhaps it was more like making a no-bake chocolate éclair cake where you layer graham crackers with a custard made of pudding and Cool Whip, then top it all off with chocolate frosting and refrigerate it overnight. When you take it out of the refrigerator the next day, everything has glopped together into something almost unrecognizable from before. Nothing has changed, yet everything has.

As I wrote, I considered what I most wanted to know. For example, how could I learn to be grateful for what I have, to be joyful in the moment even when there were so many reasons not to be—close friends and family members dying, a global pandemic, the rise of hatred and bigotry in all its forms, a rapidly escalating climate crisis, a country in which almost half its citizens pledge blind allegiance to a political party that does not work in their best interest, and on and on? How could I learn to honor the sense of loss and grief and regret and, hell, just general dismay that comes with living for over half a century without succumbing to it? And what would happen if I attempted to approach each day and each interaction with joyful intention? In other words, how might my life—how might all our lives—like chocolate éclair cake, grow more nuanced and richer as we grow older?

Intrigued by these questions, I kept going. The only rule I set for myself was that each essay must spring from a specific, current moment in time—no diving into the past, no relying on old Microsoft Word documents gathering metaphorical dust on my hard drive. If this book were going to be about finding joy in this moment, the essays needed to be grounded in the present. Though I struggled a bit with the definition of the fifty-fifth year (Did it begin on my fifty-fifth birthday—July 20, 2021—and end on my fifty-sixth birthday? Or did it begin on my fifty-fourth and end on my fifty-fifth?), I soon decided not to stress too much about the exact day something happened and to call it good if something happened roughly during this time. (This became, now that I think about it, one of the first lessons of this journey: cut yourself some slack whenever and however you can.)

The examination of joy is not a novel concept, and while writing The Joy Document, I spent time studying other creative works that have explored this topic. Through all my readings, I was struck most profoundly with the sense that it is possible to intentionally cultivate a life full of gratitude for the here and now, a life awash with joy and optimism and even humor. After all, what else are we to do in the face of so much despair?

Writing this book has allowed me to examine my own life, to discover hidden wisdom and unexpected beauty, but it has also prompted me to reflect on this larger moment when examining how we got here as a society and where we might go from here seems of paramount importance. For me, those greater truths are revealed most clearly in small, everyday moments like the ones I’ve gathered here, moments that underscore the urgency of learning to live in greater harmony with the land and with one another, of working tirelessly to preserve and protect the people and places and beliefs we hold dear.

Here is what I now know: There are times in your life when joy, like a crocus poking through the hard dirt in February, will sneak up and catch you unaware. Those moments are, indeed, rare and delightful gifts. More often, though, joy is harder to come by, and you must go searching for it. Maybe there are no crocuses this February, just clusters of dead grass in the spaces where they normally bloom. Perhaps there has been too much snow or not enough snow, too much rain, or too little light, or too many neighborhood kids kicking soccer balls through the grass, or too many dogs peeing in just this spot.

Not to worry. Crocuses are one source of joy, one thing to love about early spring, but there are other things. Perhaps, if you look hard enough, you might find mayfly larvae in the creek bed by your house, or clusters of frog eggs in the dip on the mountain trail where you run, the place where rainwater gathers and mosquitoes breed wildly in the summertime. Perhaps you will come upon that teeming puddle on a cold, winter day and be amazed by the firm, translucent, jelly-like eggs, by the tiniest dark hints of frogs-to-be visible through the surface, promises of mosquito catchers to come. Imagine the joy in that, the way it might forever change how you look at puddles, how you wait and watch for spring.

Most of the joy I have found in my life has been like that joy, tadpole joy, joy-in-the-making I have discovered when I have been open to receiving it in whatever form it comes. After a year of examining it, it seems to me that joy must go hand in hand with gratitude, that being thankful for the many gifts of this life is not a luxury but a vital, radical mindset, not unlike growing your own garden or booking a plane ticket a year out or adopting a dachshund with an average lifespan of twelve to sixteen years, all these things being a resounding rejection of despondency and dejection and despair and a fervent embracing of all that is gracious and good and true. It is also a reminder to, in the words of Peloton’s Andy Speer, keep our pain at a level that is “uncomfortable but not unmanageable,” to push through the hard things in search not of lemonade in the presence of lemons, not a superficial cheeriness or glass-half-fullness, but the strength that comes from finding what you love, what amazes and inspires you, and naming it.

This is an excerpt from the introduction of The Joy Document.