Life needs some sweetness in it every day, even if you’ve given up sugar. If you don’t get your sweet fix automatically (i.e., you’re newly in love, you recently moved to Paris, or the work you do inspires the heck out of you), insert it into your day as a priority, right up there with the dermatologist appointment and picking up the dry cleaning. The idea is to plan for sweetness to be sure to get some, and then to notice when some other candy-like life stuff shows up unbidden.

Yesterday, for example, my husband and I both arranged our schedules so we could go out for lunch. It wasn’t La Grenouille or Tavern on the Green, just a cozy little Italian place here in the neighborhood where one of the six-tables-total had our name on it. We talked about the headlines from the New York Post—A-Rod and his anabolic outing, mostly—and ate pasta in the middle of the day and walked home in a rain/snow mix that, under  the circumstances, seemed more romantic than cold, wet, and miserable. That 81 minutes of planned sweetness enriched my whole afternoon.

That evening, I escorted on an errand my friend Stan, who recently broke his arm and was uncertain about going out alone on a potentially icy night. As we walked, carefully but purposefully, west on 32nd Street in the shadow of Macy’s and Herald Square, Stan started to sing: “Ya gotta give a little, take a little, and let your poor heart break a little. That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.”

Now, I knew that Stan was an actor—half the people I know in New York City are actors—but I didn’t realize that he could sing—seriously sing. We walked, he sang, I mouthed the words, and it was sweet. That was surprise sweetness. I didn’t have to do anything to get it. It just popped into my day because God is good, and life is generous, and one sweetness draws another, like chocolates in the box when you can’t eat just one.

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