Ingratitude Journal
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Another thing that I discovered from reading Enough is that the more you learn to appreciate the good things in life, the happier and more contented you are. John Naish drew my attention to a webdesigner whose blog, Three Beautiful Things, consists of noting down things that make the world a better place. So far, so cloying. But I have to admit that whenever I have seen the opposite practice, where people’s cynicism and depression makes everything they touch turn to shit, it certainly seems to make people unnecessarily unhappy.
Anyway, as a kind of experiment, I decided to make a daily list of three things that I feel grateful for. This was a lot more difficult that it sounds. For a start, you feel obliged to be specific about what you appreciate. On Tuesday I noted down “the use of Albertus typeface on Glasgow Green”, which gives me pleasure whenever I see it, but sounds dissatisfying written down. Otherwise, the things that I appreciate tend to be rather vague like “the sense of order I feel after doing a weekly review.”
Here are some other things that I felt a bit grateful for:
- the strained, exhausted feeling you get from detoxing from caffeine
- having a relatively simple life
- the restriction in constructivist design to use only squares, circles, and triangles
- that Laura is well and enjoying New York
- DH Lawrence’s denunciation of the bourgeois in poetry
- being able to walk to work
- not being addicted to email
Unfortunately, seeing them written down stops finding pleasure in them. They are things that gave pleasure in the moment, not in the abstract. So from now on I think I’ll keep them there.