Duty to Delight

I take the word, “duty”, very seriously. It might be due largely in part to my religious upbringing. My personality also happens to learn quite severely toward, “dedication” and “commitment”- perhaps to a fault. Whatever the reason, whenever I hear the word, “duty,” my soul responds, ready for action.

I suppose it shouldn’t have been a shock, then, for me to have such a strong reaction upon hearing the phrase, “duty to delight”. Originated by John Ruskin, made popular by Dorothy Day and made new to me via Father Gregory Boyle’s gorgeous, non-fiction debut, “Tattoos on the Heart,” this particular phrase has, for lack of a better term, knocked me sideways.

My associations with the word “duty,” while always admirable, have not always been positive. It has been synonymous with obligatory, and obligatory means sacrifice, which ultimately means suffering. Duty, therefore, in a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of way, has come to mean suffering. Delight has never seemed to have had a place to belong.

Until this concept of delight as a duty ruptured all of my preconceived notions. Delight, or to take delight in, means pleasure. Puritanically and then, personally speaking, pleasure means leisure, leisure means lazy and lazy means SINFUL. See where I’m going with this? I have believed my entire life that pleasure is either sinful, or something I will never be able to earn. But, here were some incredibly reputable sources both historical and contemporary who were refuting my past beliefs with one simple edict.

What if delight was not only NOT sinful, but a duty?

What if I saw every day as an opportunity to catch beauty and goodness in action, and delight in it? The more I thought about it, the more the later sounded much more like the god I had hoped to know and much less like the one I grew up with.

We know from recent (and not so recent) research how tightly entwined our physical, emotional and spiritual health is. They are all contingent on the other. We also know the negative effects stress, anxiety and depression have on all three. What if we took our call to the duty of delight seriously? I wonder if we would all see signs of wellness as we embrace the “duty” we never knew we had.

I’ve adopted this phrase as my own. Placing it on post-it notes on my desk, writing it in EXPO markers on mirrors, using it in hashtags. I am committed to taking it seriously- this call to duty, as it were. To take delight in the simple and the beautiful and the good that is happening right now. Sure beats the other kind.

“You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight.”

-John Ruskin