The theater was full of children and their parents, all clapping and stamping, yelling and whistling. Of course they believed. Tinkerbell started glowing again. And so—in a way she’ll try to explain—did Valerie Monroe.

One of my moments of deepest pleasure came in a movie theater, but it was the audience, not the movie, that precipitated it. I had accompanied my 4-year-old son in a crowd of similar couples to a showing of Peter Pan. We were a rowdy group—there was lots of running and screaming in the aisles, seat jumping, and general, expectant, disorganized glee. But once the movie began, we quickly settled into a quieter mode; many of the kids—my son among them—climbed comfortably into their parents’ laps.

So there we all were, cozy, rapt, when Tinkerbell’s light started to go out, and Peter turned toward us with his plea to save her: “Clap! Clap if you believe in fairies!” Instantly, my son and all the other children began to clap—what sweet innocence—at first in a light, helpful patter, but as Tink’s light flickered and grew, they clapped with increasing enthusiasm, and at Peter’s exhortations, they clapped more heartily with great, serious determination. Very soon we moms and dads were clapping, too, and many of us also stamping our feet and whistling till, when Tink regained her radiant spark, the whole place exploded in a triumphant, earsplitting crescendo of unanimous rejoicing.

I was embarrassed, then, that I wept at the beauty of this spectacle. But the children’s complete lack of self-consciousness had ignited my own and the other adults’ letting go, and our utterly unbridled, common engagement in the moment was wrenchingly poignant. An ordinary Saturday afternoon, a theater full of antsy kids, a story I’d heard a thousand times—who would have thought there would be opportunity for such surrender and celebration? The point is, I shouldn’t have been surprised. For the longest time, I have been falling face-first into it everywhere: puddles of awe, as I notice the intricate patterns of rain blown against my window; rivers of it, as I paddle in a kayak beside the city and turn to see a range of towering skyscrapers, peaks of sparkling glass, majestic in the brilliant autumn sun. Maybe you have these moments, too—ordinary in every way except for your active appreciation—when engagement floods your senses, drenching you in pleasure, when there’s no past to regret or future to worry over, just the shining, magnificent, awe-inspiring now. It’s living proof that pleasure is all around you, waiting to be had.