by: John Towndrow, Chair, Transition Cornwall+ with photos by Susan Towndrow
I enjoy ironing. I find it calming and meditative. One of the things I like to iron is handkerchiefs. They are easy and fast to do, and I don’t have to think very much but when I do, I’m reminded of a few things. One is that since we switched to reuseable handkerchiefs, I haven’t had to pick off soggy bits of tissue from black shirts or trousers after a load of laundry. I also think of all the trees I’ve saved over the years by not using tissues. (Apparently millions of trees are felled annually for the entire tissue industry, often from critical boreal forests in Canada.) Finally, I get to marvel at the beautiful embroidery on the hankies my wife has collected from thrift stores, that someone long ago created just to add a little beauty to the world.
This may seem a bit mundane, but it’s one of the things in which I find joy. Another area in which I find joy is repairing things that people are ready to throw away. The other day, I rescued a friend’s hedge trimmer that had had a fight with some hidden fence wire, rendering it unusable. With a bit of careful tapping, bending and filing I was able to bring it back to life. Hooray – one more thing kept out of the landfill and one less thing to buy.
As we head into a new year and we are surrounded by gloomy news, focusing on some of the day-to-day tasks, events or observations that bring us joy is the needed antidote. It can be as simple as marvelling at how beautiful winter snow transforms the landscape.
In a lovely quote from Maria Popova’s article on her Marginalian website, she invites us to choose joy. “Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action.” She also invites us to: “Delight in the little girl zooming past you on her little bicycle, this fierce emissary of the future, rainbow tassels waving from her handlebars and a hundred beaded braids spilling from her golden helmet. Delight in the tiny new leaf, so shy and so shamelessly lush, unfurling from the crooked stem of the parched geranium.”
People often ask me what they can do to address the climate crisis so this month as we enter a whole brand-new year, my response is to encourage everyone to find daily moments of joy in everyday life. None of these small acts of finding joy take money, energy or a purchase and yet they are so powerful in connecting us to each other and to the world.
PS: If you get a hankering to switch to hankies you can find them at thrift stores, online or perhaps even at your grandparent’s house.
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