Delight Touchstones: Surviving the Cognitive Dissonance of 2025

There are cur­rent­ly two things on my bed­side table: A copy of Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic arti­cle enti­tled The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans and Sunrise on the Reaping, the new Hunger Games pre­quel by Suzanne Collins.

Yesterday, I watched two things: a live stream of the Cory Booker fil­i­buster and the newest episode of The White Lotus.

And the top two items on my week’s to-do list?

• Call Rand Paul RE: Support the res­o­lu­tion to block arms sales to Israel
• Order news strings for guitar

I am struck by the insane cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of the world right now. Should I be singing and play­ing my gui­tar while the world burns? Reading for plea­sure when I should be call­ing my sen­a­tors instead? I am whiplashed by the bum­mer and the beau­ti­ful, the aggra­va­tion and the awe­some, the dai­ly mun­dan­i­ty while democ­ra­cy burns. 

It can feel fool­ish or gra­tu­itous to lean into those things that offer us solace and joy right now. But I would argue that these touch­stones of delight are more than vital. I’m not talk­ing about the dis­so­cia­tive act of mind­ful­ness con­sump­tion, but of those things that remind us that there is so much good around us all the time if only we will pay attention.

Somewhere, right this sec­ond, a young man just offered his seat to a new mom on the subway. 

A barista is draw­ing a heart into someone’s latte. 

The sun­light is danc­ing on the waves.

A cat is purring in a sunbeam. 

A tod­dler is danc­ing in the kitchen. 

An artist is for­go­ing sleep to cre­ate some­thing that will bring the rest of us to tears. 

These moments aren’t head­line-wor­thy in our day and age. They aren’t curat­ed or par­tic­u­lar­ly dig­ni­fied. They don’t feed the algo­rithm. But we shouldn’t get so locked down by what’s impor­tant that we miss these moments of human true­ness. I see so many people—on both sides of the polit­i­cal aisle—victims of their own echo cham­bers, turn­ing ever more bit­ter and mean. Spending all of our time wor­ry­ing leaves us over­whelmed and only focused on the prob­lems, rather than any solu­tions. The machine demands our atten­tion above all else, but it’s one of the few things we control.

Delight is nour­ish­ment for anx­i­ety, a balm for over­whelm. It reg­u­lates and reminds us of what it means to be a human with the capac­i­ty to be moved, inspired, and awed. 

So I’m gonna dance. And sing. And write and play my gui­tar and lie down in the ever-green­er grass. I will drink my cof­fee and read my books and pet my dog, not as a way to avoid my real­i­ty, but as an act of resistance. 

What are your delight touch­stones right now?