At the end of 2023, the House of the Open Door community generously invited me to come speak at one of their Fellowship Friday events. That event took place 10 May, and I titled the talk “Pleasure and Joy.” Here’s a link to the recording on YouTube. It’s about 50 minutes long.
I find speaking to be much more natural than writing. I enjoy both, but sometimes I find writing difficult because I cannot link my words to an audience. When I write, it sometimes feels like shouting into the void. Speaking, on the other hand, always has an audience. That helps not just in the moment, trying to read people’s reactions and tweak things on the fly to clarify something or lean more heavily on something that works. Knowing that there will be an audience, of any size, generates an enthusiasm to communicate the things which form the foundation for all my thoughts and which immeasurably enrich the experience of life. The preparation for a talk is, for me, something like a flow state.1
I find it much more difficult to enter a flow state when writing. It happens sometimes. But the distance between the author and the reader is much greater than the distance between a speaker and a listener, and I think that is true even when the speech is transmitted over a recording.
Should anyone take the time to watch the talk, I would be very grateful for your thoughts. Disagreements are always welcome.
A term in psychology where someone is so focused on a task they recognize as intrinsically meaningful that he or she loses track of time, sort of “forgets” themselves, and (after the fact) is recognized as a joyful one.