Reflecting on Henry’s instruction to find life’s joys, Bowler asserts that joy is slippery and accidental, recalling a hospital stay after a liver resection. The surgery followed a period of misdiagnosis, during which an emergency room had dismissed her severe pain with Pepto-Bismol while cancer spread from her colon to her liver. Two days after her surgery, a surgical resident visited Bowler to remove a stomach tube she hadn’t known existed; initially distrustful, she made him leave and reenter properly. The doctor played along, assuming the part of a magician as Bowler instructed. His stubborn commitment won her over. Although the tube removal was painful, when she opened her eyes and saw his white coat sprayed with blood, the two burst into laughter. The shared absurdity produced a week of unexpected joy. Bowler concludes she has a new assignment: Invite more joy into everyday life.

Bowler lists eight research findings regarding joy: Joy cannot be summoned by willpower; grateful people experience more joy; joy is random and immune to habituation, since it depends on surprise; joy can be anticipated, can become a personal disposition over time, can cultivate hope and delight, involves feelings of harmony, aliveness, transcendence, and unselfconsciousness, and grows more accessible with practice.

Bowler recalls her experience at a faculty dinner. While here, Bowler told a behavioral scientist colleague she found the science of personal transformation exhausting, then admitted she was trying to be more joyful. He reframed the goal as a puzzle, suggesting she start with the boundaries of what you want before grouping the pieces by resemblance. Bowler struggled to articulate what she wanted, eventually realizing she wanted the kind of joy she felt in extraordinary moments—a sense of being held in the hospital, or meeting her son. She wondered where joy was now, citing George Eliot’s lament that joy always seemed to live in the past.

Bowler offers nine quotes from grieving people who found joy in unexpected small moments, including adopting a loved one’s cat, surprising themselves with genuine laughter, passing a newborn around a hospital waiting room, floating in a pool, silent laughter at a pastor’s repeated mispronunciation of a name during a funeral, and being ambushed by the fact that spring arrives anyway. She concludes the list with a quote from the Buddhist tradition that life holds “ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows” (161)

Trying to find joy in her own life, Bowler recounts recent experiences with her son. While Zach was using a metal detector in the North Carolina woods in March, he became excited about starting a family junkyard after finding a 1936 Chevrolet hubcap. Zach explained that junk was something found and given a new job. On a walk, he treasured a found dime and later refused to have his collection organized or cleaned. Bowler, reflecting on hedonic adaptation and how quickly miracles feel ordinary, recognizes a quieter version of joy in her son. Invoking C.S. Lewis’s notion that joy is a reminder, she concludes she must learn to fill her own pockets with ordinary pleasures.

Bowler lists 10 children’s definitions of joy, which include keeping people safe, excitement at seeing unusual animals, having everyone you love nearby, happiness from God, and “balloons and Christmas” (169).

Bowler describes her constant work to manage her chronic pain through regular chiropractic and physical therapy. On the adjustment table one day recently, she reflected that joy cannot be forced. However, this notion contrasts with her Mennonite upbringing, which values practicality over emotional spontaneity. Her father-in-law, Ken Penner—whom she characterizes as devoted to lowered expectations—recently revealed a private bargain: If Bowler survived five years past her diagnosis, he would do the most embarrassing thing he could imagine: walk to his church’s pulpit and shout “Hallelujah.” He followed through, expressing gratitude for Bowler’s survival, and raising both hands in surrender before his congregation. In retrospect, Bowler is moved that he had allowed himself to hope.

Bowler asserts that she wants to lower the threshold required for joy, referencing a happy couple she met at a conference dinner. She was charmed by the couple’s visible delight with each other. When she asked how they met, the husband explained he biked to their first encounter directly from a Civil War reenactment, still wearing enormous sideburns and a mustache. His future wife saw him, realized she had to decide in that moment, and chose to take him as he was. Bowler connects their story to Father Ron’s idea that delight is a spontaneous response to goodness and beauty—rare in adults unless one simply decides that a ridiculous mustache is something worth loving.

Bowler lists 12 small joys others experienced within the past week: a great hair day, a son home from college, finally making a long-delayed call, quitting a toxic job, being loved by dogs, delivering a meal to a neighbor, a guilt-free nap, lemon pound cake for dinner, playing a beloved vintage piano, news that a parent’s cancer is operable, beautiful trees outside a window, and being asked to leave an ice cream shop at closing because of too much laughter.

Bowler recounts another experience with the Best Friend. On a morning walk, Bowler told the Best Friend that imagining her own life improving made her uncomfortable. The Best Friend asserted that Bowler was terrible at receiving gifts, always scanning for someone else who needed them more—a habit Bowler traces to her Mennonite family’s tradition of redistributing Christmas presents until everyone had equal shares. The Best Friend concluded that if joy was a gift, Bowler must learn to hold it. In reflection, Bowler recalled a Christmas when her mother bought everyone the cartoon dog nightshirts she had requested, displeasing her sisters. Bowler resolves to stop redistributing her joy and to accept those gifts which were specifically for her.

Bowler recalls her further attempts to welcome joy. After a conversation with a successful but exhausted businesswoman who longed to “take my place among the trees” (188), Bowler enrolled in a weekend workshop at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham—home to the world’s largest lemur population outside Madagascar. Over two days, she learned about lemur biology, watched lemurs’ curious social behaviors, and saw lemurs wear horse blinders to block the sight of rivals. The workshop ended when the group found a troop of ring-tailed lemurs sunbathing serenely in a clearing, arms outstretched and perfectly still. A curator said that when set up to display their natural behaviors, lemurs seem most themselves. Bowler concludes that humans, too, may find joy in simply taking their place among the living world.

Bowler describes an experience she had at the hospital. After she was bitten by a snake, Bowler spent the night in the Duke ER. Earlier, on a neighborhood walk, Bowler felt a pinch at her ankle she initially dismissed as a bug bite. Her husband and son found puncture wounds and drove her to urgent care, where staff sent her to the ER. She arrived declaring she had been poisoned. Two doctors confirmed a likely baby copperhead bite and warned the antivenom would cost at least $100,000, though she would probably keep her leg. In the same ER that had once sent her home with Pepto-Bismol while cancer spread through her body, Bowler talked for hours about every instance of medical neglect in her history, then slept.

Later, a young night-shift nurse learned from the chart that Bowler was a frequent visitor. When Bowler mentioned the antacid dismissal, the nurse disclosed that her own husband had died suddenly in this hospital one month earlier; she was requesting overnight shifts because the ER’s intensity felt more normal than home. The nurse placed her hand on Bowler’s and offered a genuine personal apology for how little care Bowler had been given. Bowler wept, and through the release felt an unexpected surge of joy—years of resentment falling away, leaving her briefly and mysteriously whole.

Bowler continues her snakebite anecdote. Discharged after the snakebite, Bowler called her parents to announce she would keep the leg and found the experience unexpectedly healing. Buoyed by a new hunger for life, she rapidly arranged to go shark-tagging off South Carolina and paragliding. In a Jeep heading up the mountain, she realized the form she was given was not a liability waiver but a provisional 30-day paragliding pilot’s license—for her.

Her instructor, Tompk, commanded her to run and not stop when the ground disappeared. She ran; the earth fell away, and the sail carried her over the valley. Tompk calmed her by monologuing about his childhood. A week later she tagged sharks. Over the following months, she kayaked at night hunting bioluminescent jellyfish, rented a pirate ship for the Best Friend’s birthday, and visited giant roadside attractions. She concludes that the snakebite dislodged an old habit of self-protection, and that finding joy requires deliberate detours from efficient routine.

Bowler introduces “No Reason Season”—a term from her sister Maria—as a deliberate break from productivity and self-improvement. She then offers eight suggestions for purposeless delight, including hosting a blind taste-test party, imagining a laugh track when meeting strangers, dressing as a 1990s album cover, singing love songs to a pet by name, wearing sequins to a mundane appointment, making toilet paper origami, keeping cookie dough in the freezer, and assigning walk-up songs to household members. She closes the chapter repeatedly insisting there are always more opportunities for joy.