Delight Not Fright

I wore two different mittens the other day. Both were leather. One was heavy and black. The other one was reddish brown and lighter-weight. Even though I took one of the mittens off several times to take photos in the cold I still didn’t notice that the two mittens were different until I took the other one off to dig in my bag for a tissue. I laughed not only because it took me so long to notice the difference but because the mittens were so obviously unlike one another. One was so much bigger and thicker that it almost seemed to be a different size. I smiled at my ability, hard-won over many years, to delight in my own mistakes and to enjoy the entertainment those mistakes offered me. To be charmed by something is to be drawn toward paying attention to it and often also to believe it is true. I spent much of my life accepting the invitation to experience unwarranted feelings of fright. I was afraid I would look foolish or be labeled a complete failure whenever I felt I preformed less than perfectly in a given situation. Some people seem to have learned to be charmed by the unexpected at a much younger age than I did. They allow themselves to be delighted instead of frightened by things that break the humdrum pattern of certainty in their lives. Their ability to be entertained by what could be seen as awkward or potentially shaming gives me hope for the trajectory of the entire human race.