"The Supremacy of Little Joys"

Cutting up bread to have with my morning coffee, I look up to see if the water on the stove is boiling yet. For no discernible reason my heart soars. I am overwhelmed with a wonderful joy such that there is meaning in all things, a richness and texture to existence itself. I am snapped back again whole into my place in the order of things and alive with them all of a sudden in a sweet throb.

There are things that can make us happy, give us pleasure. We know what these are. We know what we like. But these count as nothing against such little tiny joys as would seem to have no basis whatsoever, but spring forth uninvited, like pinpoints of light. The supremacy of little joys resides in the fact that their cause is small, so very tiny in fact that it approaches the vanishing point. We can relate what happened, what led up to them. But we can't actually find the reason. They have no separate reason — except for what is ubiquitous and everywhere readily apparent. Having no reason except everything, they fool us, these beggars, for they possess a vaster wealth of reason behind them than any of the kinds of things that we can value or know to want. Everything is their reason. They exude from the totality. And springing forth as they do upon us at uninvited moments, they visit us with a feel for the wholeness. It's the only way we can know the entire universe, all of eternity — in an instant. A love so great — has to whisper.