The case of spontaneous joy.
and why you should try it too.
I am a planner. I plan for trips and hangouts with friends weeks and months in advance. But this past weekend, aside from a colleague’s graduation party, my calendar was empty. Instead of going from one planned activity to the next, I relaxed, got bored, and did things on a whim.
One evening, I found myself at IKEA, indulging in Swedish meatballs for dinner and eye-feasting on the newest collection of organization tools: shelves, cubbies, drawer organizers, and boxes of all sizes. I loved the spontaneity of it. I wanted to go to IKEA and I turned right into its parking garage instead of turning left to head home. There was no anticipatory joy leading up to the event. It was pure delight at the moment, and I cherished this highly concentrated bliss.
I decided to watch PAST LIVES (Celine Song, 2023) one hour before the start time at a local arthouse theater and cried through most of it. The movie follows the story of, Nora, a Korean-Canadian living in NYC, who reunites with her childhood sweetheart, Hae Sung, after she left Seoul at age twelve. Nora, now married to a white Jewish man, is suddenly transported back to the world she’d left behind with Hae Sung’s visit. This brief reunion leaves her contemplating the life she has now and mourning the life she could have lived.
It is a heartbreakingly beautiful and poignant story about the what-ifs in life and also an immigrant story of leaving one life behind for another. I left the movie theater with red eyes and tears still on my cheek, partly for the movie, and partly for the profound experience of collective movie-watching in a darkened room - a feeling I had forgotten since it’d been a while since I watched a movie in a theater.
Other moments of unplanned happiness were mostly uneventful and simple: making a small and uneven bouquet out of the front yard lavender bush on a hot summer afternoon; taking a nap in the afternoon without an alarm because I had nowhere to be; turning on the air conditioning for the first time this year and feeling the blissful cold air on my face.
It was a rare weekend when I had nothing on the calendar. There’s nowhere to rush to, and there’s nothing to check off the list, at least for now. I was just being, and spontaneous joy found me. So here it is, my very spontaneous post.
Finding unplanned moments of happiness isn’t always easy, especially if you’re a parent, a caretaker, or someone who works multiple jobs. Nevertheless, I hope that each of us can always carve out a small space here and there for some spontaneous moments of fun and highly concentrated joy.
Here is the trailer of Past Lives. I hope you get a chance to watch it.
As always, thank you for being here.
Until next time,
Yuezhong
I can't wait to see past lives. I'm a planner too and it's hard to be spontaneous when you have kids, but trying to conjure up the time pre-kids when life was more spontaneous. It will have to be small moments, but that may be enough!
Hammock naps with no alarms have been my happiness retreats this summer.