Why do I keep the small, delightful things I notice to myself?
One morning I saw a rooster chasing his own shadow. He was so serious about it, like the shadow owed him money. I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my donkey. Then I looked around. No one else was laughing. So I swallowed it, sat up straight, and rode on like I'd seen nothing. You do this too, I think. You notice the strange, small, beautiful thing — the cloud shaped like an argument, the dog that walks like your uncle — and you feel the laugh rise up. Then you check the room. No one else seems to have noticed. So you fold the joke back into your pocket and keep walking. Here is the part nobody tells you: the rooster did not need an audience to be funny. You decided you did. That decision, made quietly a hundred times, is why the noticing stays rich and private — and why it has started to feel lonely instead of delightful.
You are not too strange for your own delight — you just decided, quietly, that joy needs a witness's permission before it counts. It doesn't. Tell the small thing anyway, to one person, even badly. The rule only holds until you break it once.
What changes unlock by starting
- You catch yourself mid-swallow and choose to speak instead, at least sometimes.
- You have one or two people who now hear your small noticings regularly.
- The delight itself grows bigger once it's shared, instead of shrinking.
- You stop treating your own laugh as something that needs permission first.