Joy

Pleasure is planned.

Joy happens.

Pleasure is what you feel eating a plate of grilled fresh sardines at a little taverna in Crete with the sun dipping down over the Agean. It took four airplanes to get here, and countless hours poring over airbnb apartments to find a cool and funky place to stay, and concerted exploration of tripadvisor and yelp to find the taverna. And then you had to walk a mile to get here. But now here you are. And it’s lovely. It’s delightful. It’s a pleasure.

Joy is when you are crouched filthy and sweaty in the garden pulling the umpteenth thistle from in between the tomato plants, and you look up to see the cat walking on the edge of the raised-bed box, all slinky and graceful, sinuous and supple, and for no reason he stops and turns his head to look at you, and his eyes are as green as grass, and it takes your breath away. And in the place of that breath joy floods in.

What does this have to do with counterclockwise living?

Everything.