Some mornings I feel almost guilty for how good my coffee and freedom taste. Somewhere, right now, people are hungry, frightened, grieving. So the question is: Do I have the right to feel this good when so many don’t?

The poet Jack Gilbert answered that in his poem, “A Brief for the Defense.” He writes as if happiness were on trial and he were its lawyer.

He doesn’t deny the evidence. He names the hunger and cruelty plainly. Then he makes his case: refusing our gladness feeds no one and frees no one. It only makes their deprivation matter less. People in the hardest places still laugh and sing. Joy belongs to being human.

So Gilbert tells us, “We must risk delight.” Risk. Not enjoy, not deserve. Risk.

Happiness is a condition, the weather of a life going well. It depends on circumstances, so it is hard to claim when circumstances are cruel.

Delight is a moment. Light on the water. A friend’s laugh. It only needs us to notice. That is why delight can live inside sorrow, where happiness often can’t. And it takes courage, because it asks us to lower our guard even knowing loss is near.

Two true things can exist at once. I see this in my coaching. A client loses out on a job they wanted badly. They made the final round, showed up as their best self, then heard: we went another way. The disappointment is real.

But as we talk, something else surfaces. They were seen. People met them, listened, and learned what they bring. I watch their face soften as they remember the hiring manager leaning in. For someone over 50 who has felt invisible in this job market, that matters.

Can you hold both? Disappointed about the outcome, and grateful for the opportunity? Yes. You Can.

A door was opened. It didn’t lead where they hoped, not yet. But they can keep it open. Write a thank-you note that means it. Stay in touch. Build a deeper relationship with the people who saw them.

That is delight in a hard place. Not pretending the loss didn’t happen. Refusing to let the loss erase the gift and the gratitude.

When we’re young, we think we must choose: life is good or life is hard. With years, we learn that grief and gladness share the same table.

Happiness may thin with age. Delight doesn’t have to. Gratitude is the doorway, the kind that says thank you while knowing exactly how much isn’t fine.

This week, catch one moment of delight each day and fully own it. No apology. No guilt. And if you’re living through a loss, ask: What door has opened, even here?

The world’s suffering is real. So is your joy. You are allowed both.

Risk delight.

♦

Here is the poem – A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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This is also important – The Opposites in the World and You.

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