WHO AND WHAT GOT YOU DELIGHTED?
These were the check-in prompts I shared with my mentee group for Vision 20/20 as we started our session. It was prodded after a “delightful” experience of Christmas shopping with my husband wherein we bought gifts for love ones. And I even got a gift for me that brought me so much delight (the picture and story below!)
The questions got everyone thinking hard.
In these days where heaviness is taking a toll on one’s physical body not to mention the emotional as well, it can feel daunting to tap into “delight” and what or who got us feel delighted.
Yet it was a much needed prompt for all of us to see what is going strong. It gave us recent memories of slowing down, finding goodness, grace and gratitude, and of appreciating the messiness of life and everything else that goes along with it.
When I tapped into this question of delight other questions surfaced for me:
How does my body register delight? What are my telltale signs of delight?
Where does my body remember delight? Where in my body can I feel delight?
What thoughts come up as I think of the word and experience of delight?
What are my earliest memories of delight as a child? And with whom?
What were the experiences or glimpses of delight that I saw from others around me? Especially from my mom, my brother and my grandma who are major pillars in my life?
How long do I hold delight in my system? How long do I let myself bask in delight?
The last question was revealing.
I realized that I treat delight as something “fleeting” or “flimsy”. Something that I get on a whim or given to me at a spur of the moment. My overall perception of delight is it’s not something that lasts long, and if it does, then it’s “hard work to make it delightful”.§
Another perception I have is, delight is not for the everyday otherwise it would “lose its charm”. It needs to be sprinkled in small dosages and spaced far off in between to “not get used to it.”
These thoughts got me thinking hard.
It got me equating delight with worthiness. That there is a certain amount of worthiness involved to be granted delight in life.
As I think about these thoughts, I am reminded of our colonial past as Filipinos. Where the “favored Indios” are shown provisions when they are doing well. “But just enough, so they don’t get used to it and demand for more!”
This realization made me stop in my tracks. This is what power over systems do. Colonization has made us internally oppress ourselves in thinking we can only be given special things and experiences only if we are worthy.
Decolonization is teaching me the entire opposite. In the Blackfoot Nations tribe where Maslow spent his time understanding how the natives lived, he realized how the society was built different. He saw how they were engaged with each other in ways different to western society.
According to Blood and Heavy Head’s lectures (2007), 30-year-old Maslow arrived at Siksika along with Lucien Hanks and Jane Richardson Hanks. He intended to test the universality of his theory that social hierarchies are maintained by dominance of some people over others. However, he did not see the quest for dominance in Blackfoot society. Instead, he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction. He estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population”
In Blackfoot Nations they believe that “we are all born self-actualized”. This is why I no longer subscribe to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When I sink into this reframing that from the minute we are born, we are all self-actualized, then it means I am worthy, no matter what. And my worthiness is not dictated by another person, nor is it dictated by what I do in the world.
In Blackfoot culture, “it’s like you’re credentialed at the start. You’re treated with dignity for that reason, but you spend your life living up to that.” While Maslow saw self-actualization as something to earn, the Blackfoot see it as innate. Relating to people as inherently wise involves trusting them and granting them space to express who they are (as perhaps manifested by the permissiveness with which the Siksika raise their children) rather than making them the best they can be. For many First Nations, therefore, self-actualization is not achieved; it is drawn out of an inherently sacred being who is imbued with a spark of divinity. Education, prayer, rituals, ceremonies, individual experiences, and vision quests can help invite the expression of this sacred self into the world.
My worthiness is because I am.
Because of my presence in this world.
My worthiness is the divinity that resides in me and resides in all of us for we are all worthy.
We are all born self-actualized.
It might be that life experiences, unhealed histories, and/or family traumas have disconnected us from our essence.
It can be that we fail to see our goodness because of all the hurts we have experienced in life.
Yet it is there, the minute we were conceived- our lives are products of many generations. We are made possible because of the choices and experiences of our ancestors.
From my mother’s family history, the family name Pamintuan carries a lot of history.
Pamintuan -derivative of Kapampangan mamintu “to obey”.
It can be traced back to the 1500s - to a time before the Spaniards came. When I think of our family’s lineage, I feel so much delight knowing of our wealth of history. There is also pride surfacing along with this delight.
Yet how do we shift our perceptions around delight?
How to move from thinking of it as something that we need to be deserving of, to delight as our birthright?
As I peel off the masks from hundreds of years of oppression, and decades of my own oppressive self that has kept this “am I deserving or worthy” narratives alive, I find myself giving compassion.
Compassion to the parts of my history especially my ancestors who most probably experienced so much oppression. I knew from little stories I heard from my grandma how it was during the war and how they would hide at night so the Japanese wouldn’t see them. I lived in a privileged and sheltered life where I have not experienced such sufferings. So I take the time to acknowledge how challenging it would have been for my ancestors to make choices and to shed off perceptions as well when surviving was a priority.
I also give compassion to the parts of me that held these stories close to my heart specially when people around me and the culture I grew up in was steeped into this “who is deserving of love gets rewarded and who isn’t are banished or called out as black sheep”.
As I rekindle my relationship with delight, I take pause and find so much gratitude in the delight I am already living in.
the snoring sounds of our dog next to us on our bed
the sound of good morning followed by a warm hug and kiss from my husband
pitter patter of kids going about preparing themselves independently in the morning
the ushering of a new day as the sun shines by our bedroom window
These are just some of the delightful ways that life is present for me.
And in the same vein that I remind myself to bask in kindness, I would also keep to heart to bask in delight.
For I am worthy, and we are worthy, of finding ourselves in delightful moments, surrounded by delightful people and our presence as sources of delight as well.
For people going through hardships, genocides, wars, mental, physical and emotional struggles, I do know and recognize how much of this post is coming from my place of privilege. It is in no way intended to undermine or discredit your lived experiences and the challenge it is to tap into delight when going through difficult circumstances.
May these words find you at a time when you need it.