I am cheerful, content, and delighted.

Cheerful is a surface, content is a floor, and delight is a spark. Three different speeds entirely.

Contentment builds over months and you only notice it in retrospect — a Sunday where nothing was missing. Delight arrives in about a second, unearned: a heron lifting off the canal as you pass, a forgotten song coming on in a shop.

The spark cannot be manufactured, but you can be available for it. Most of them get missed by people looking down at a screen.

Walk one stretch of today with your head up. The delight is usually already there, waiting to be intercepted.