Delight is in the Detail

We all remember where we were when some great, often catastrophic, event happened. I was standing at the foot of my sick father’s bed when President Kennedy’s death was broadcast. The Duke of Edinburgh was berating me on board the Royal Yacht Britannia about my ‘owing the Royal Family 120 years back royalties for inventing Brands Essence of Chicken’. The horror of the Vietnam war was implanted forever in my mind by the picture of a little girl running naked down the street away from the shelling. The tragedy of the 2004 tsunami is lodged in my thoughts the day after Christmas in my Courtyard UK home.

You will have your own memories. Great moments are always outside of time as Ronald Dworkin, of the University of Virginia, said when discussing death. They are the punctuations of life, the reminders of the transience of time, the Velcros of memory and the elasticity of mental stimulus. They are the bonbouche to whet the appetite and the tip of the sun as it sinks behind the horizon. 

We should pay more attention to our great moments. They give us meaning. 

Mental exercise is vital to keep the mind rattling and I suggest you do so by taking a while to savour some of your great moments. Not fleetingly, as in a story over drinks, but deeply, as in a lesson to the young to liberate the enjoyment of their escapades. Detail contains Delight, not the Devil. The taste of freshly cut asparagus from the Formby, Lancashire sand dunes, lightly boiled, betrothed with butter, is as memorable today as it was delicious in 1941.

A dawn walk with a First Flirtation made the rising sun a tremulous heart flutter. There was more to sunrise than awakening of the day. A less than six foot gap between the structure of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the funnels of the Queen Mary sailing under it captured New York in all its autumnal solemnity. A near embrace of thanks from a poor, lost soul in a wintry Johannesburg was gratitude so rare as to last far beyond a mortal life.

The births, the marriages, the deaths all bring their great moments but for undiluted joy recall the exceptions rather than the rules. A performance of the Bruch Violin Concerto by the then 18-y-o Chloe Chua taught me at 92 what purity is. A suitcase of sadness when posted away from home at 46 bore tears of acid - a dusk and a dawn at the same time.

What would I think of as my lasting great moment if there was time for only one more?

It would be the delight of a child seeing a beautiful view for the first time. Pleasure is a state of learning. A landscape view is a revelation of love. A child’s surprise is a door to a new world. The squeeze of a hand, an exotic exclamation. The calm of sudden glimpses, eternity.

May your great moments be forever with you.

May you fathom the Delight waiting for you in the Detail.

Good morning

John Bittleston

Do you have a great moment to share?

Please do so at mentors@terrificmentors.com.