On Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending a daylong retreat on the theme, Finding Joy in a Complex World. For many of us right now, the world feels fraught, not just in our personal lives, but at a national and planetary scale. So how do we continue to find the joy in the midst of real struggle and difficulty?

One of the suggestions of our teacher was to start looking for those moments in which you feel amazement. The moments in which you go, “Oh!” or “Wow!” or “Mmmm…” because they are so full of life. It may be before school catching a glimpse of the sunrise from your back windows. Perhaps it is a long hug with your child. Maybe, in the middle of the day, it’s a hearty laugh with a colleague over some ridiculous thing or another a child did on your class that morning.

Sometimes, we wait for events like Thanksgiving to remind us to be grateful, and then, there is often the suggestion that we are grateful for the significant things in our lives. But what happens if we slow down and experience gratitude for the smaller moments? If we start the day intending to find moments that are uplifting, pleasant, or inspiring? Not because they are huge flashy moments, but because they are subtly inviting us to notice. To appreciate. To Wow.

Today, I invite you to look for these micro-moments that we can bask in and savor.