The Joy of the Mundane: On Golf, Red Bull, and Choosing Joy in a Chaotic World

What a Paper Products Salesman Taught Me About Spring

Spring in Tenerife

I am aware of the chaos. I do not live with my eyes closed, my ears plugged, my heart shielded from the weight of the world. I read the headlines. I feel the unease that hums beneath daily life, the collective exhaustion of a world that seems to spin faster and more erratically with each passing season. I know what is happening, and I do not pretend otherwise.

And yet, spring arrives anyway. The bluebonnets push through soil that was baked dry by summer and chilled by winter’s final frost, painting the Texas hillsides in swaths of blue that stop traffic and soften hearts. The bougainvillea, that stubborn, glorious vine of my ancestors, begins its slow climb toward explosion, its papery bracts of magenta and coral a reminder that beauty, too, is persistent. The light lingers a little longer each evening. The air softens, and with it, something in me softens too.

I have made a choice, you see. Not to ignore the chaos, but to refuse to let it be the only story. I choose to find joy in myself and in the world around me, not despite what is happening, but as an act of quiet rebellion. Joy, I have learned, is not naivety. It is a practice. And like any practice, it requires intention, attention, and sometimes, a reminder from an unexpected source.

That reminder came for me in the dead of an Austin winter, delivered by a man who sells paper products in Chicago and loves golf with a devotion that bordered on religious.

The process of meeting him was not, shall we say, seamless. The payment processing app had a cap on transactions, a digital headache that required patience and a few exasperated texts. Then came the winding roads that led to the Omni, a dark night and unfamiliar streets testing my commitment to punctuality. When I finally arrived, the relief was mutual. He was relieved that I had shown up, that the woman who walked through the door looked better than the photographs that had drawn him in. I was relieved that I was on time, that my own standards of professionalism had been met despite the universe’s efforts to thwart them.

We settled into the room, and conversation drifted. He asked about my heritage… Nigerian-Haitian, I told him… and remarked, with genuine wonder, how unique I looked.

I teased him. “You live in Chicago,” I said. “Surely you’ve seen women who look like me before.”

It was not a bid for compliment. However, I do find something deeply attractive, almost intoxicating, in a man who yearns for a woman to the point of inventing new descriptors for his perception of her. The effort itself is the gift. The attention is the art.

He asked if I would like a drink. Red Bull, I said. He shot me a quizzical look, so I explained: a group project presentation loomed the next day, and I was still practicing. An all-nighter was the price of my perfectionism (I’m working on it).

Time passed. The Red Bull did not arrive. He called the front desk, patient and kind with the voice on the other end. I noted this, filed it away. In my experience, people in positions of power often flex that power in small, unkind ways toward those who serve them. His gentleness with a hotel employee, in the middle of a night he had paid for, told me more about him than any biography could.

Before the Red Bull finally appeared, he asked if he could rub my feet.

I said yes. And then, for a long, suspended stretch of time, his hands worked the tension from places I did not even know held tension. He was gentle, deliberate, present. He was not performing. He was attending.

We talked through it. He spoke of his work in paper product manufacturing, a career he described with a matter-of-factness that suggested he had long ago made peace with the mundanity of it. And then he spoke of golf. His face changed. His voice lifted. The bag of clubs leaning against the hotel wall and the profile picture on that troublesome payment app suddenly made sense. Golf, for him, was not a hobby. It was a lifeline.

I watched him describe a perfect drive and the particular satisfaction of a well-executed putt. And I thought: This is it. This is the thing. The world can be falling apart, and still, a man who sells paper products in Chicago will find joy in a Sunday round of golf. Not because he is ignorant of the chaos, but because he has learned, perhaps unconsciously, that joy is not a distraction from life. It is life itself.

The night unfolded beautifully. He was attentive to my body in a way that was so convincing, so present, that I nearly abandoned my group project entirely. Nearly. But the presentation loomed, and I am, for better or worse, a woman of my word. I left before dawn, carrying with me the quiet warmth of an evening well spent.

I have thought about him often since, especially as winter thawed into spring. He reminded me of something I already knew but had allowed myself to forget: that we must keep doing the things that bring us joy, even when the world feels heavy. Especially when the world feels heavy. The manufacturing and sales of paper products may not be glamorous, but the devotion to a craft, any craft, is its own form of grace. And golf, with its patience and precision, its insistence on the long view, is a kind of secular prayer.

Spring, for me, is the season of this remembering. It is the rebirth not of the world, but of our attention to it. The bluebonnets do not wait for the chaos to subside before they carpet the hillsides. The bougainvillea does not withhold its explosion of color until the headlines improve. The light does not hesitate to lengthen. Spring arrives, indifferent to our worries, and offers us the same invitation it always has: to begin again. To find joy in the mundane. To let ourselves be surprised by tenderness in a hotel room, by the kindness of a stranger on the phone, by the particular relief of hands on tired feet.

I have carried his lesson into this season. I am choosing, deliberately, to find joy in the small things: the first radish pulled from my garden, the particular blue of a hillside in bloom, the stubborn magenta of bougainvillea climbing toward sun, the laughter of friends around a table. I am choosing to be open, to try new things, to let spring do its work on me.

And I am choosing, always, to offer that same gift to the gentlemen who find their way to me. A space where the chaos is acknowledged, then set aside. An evening where the only agenda is presence, where the mundane becomes sacred, where two people remind each other that joy is still possible, still necessary, still waiting to be claimed.

So consider this your spring invitation. Not to escape the world, but to meet it differently. To let an evening with me be your golf, your garden, your gentle hands on tired feet. To remember, together, what we already know: that joy is not a luxury. It is the practice of being alive.

The bluebonnets are blooming. The bougainvillea is beginning its climb. The daylight is staying longer. I am here, ready to begin again with you.