We care about delight, and are devoting the final section of this book to it, because it is in some ways only possible when authenticity and immediacy are well tuned and coordinated. It helps to understand them first. At the same time, delight is a dimension of experience comprised of many of the intangible ingredients of good teaching and learning – the peak of good teaching and learning, by some definitions. In situations that require us to understand others and increase their understanding, sparking joy, genuine curiosity, and intrinsically motivated persistence will always be more useful than leveraging fear, lack of relevance, and routine.

Though easily fumbled, delight is fully worth pursuing (we'll explain why later). And though it often scans as play or serendipity, the implanting of delight in a product, service, or experience often requires immense skill and thoughtfulness, the timing born of immediacy, and the human touch born of authenticity (we'll explain how later, too).

But first, let's return to our pattern of introductory metaphors …If you've been following the extended metaphors in this book so far, you've played – at least mentally – on the seesaw of Authenticity and navigated the narrow, winding road of Immediacy. In this last section, we're going to ask you to consider, as metaphor, an image from a poem by the poet Rainer Marie Rilke (1875–1926).

In his 1918 poem “The Archaic Torso of Apollo,” Rilke writes about a statue of the Greek god Apollo. The important thing to know about the statue, at this point, is that its head is missing. As a result, in the poem, Rilke, or rather, Rilke's speaker, focuses on the statue's chest, shoulders, torso, and legs. Apparently, they are quite spectacular. They convey a rare power, drawing in the viewer even though he or she cannot, as the opening line imparts, “know [that statue's] legendary head / with eyes ripening like fruit.”

After describing the statue and drifting into territories both philosophical and psychological, the poem ends, famously, with a direct address to the reader: “You must change your life.”

As we have invited you to do in previous sections, we invite you now: Use the metaphor – in this case, of a glorious, though headless, statue – as a form of mental velcro, attaching to it your evolving understandings and insights as you read, ponder, look at the illustrations, and complete any other emergent tasks in this section.

Begin Again with Immediacy and Authenticity

Before we fully leave the shores – and twisting roads – of immediacy for the waters of delight, we have to explore some of the downsides of immediacy.

To review, as teachers are wont to do at the start of a new lesson, immediacy in transactions, the kind we promote, occurs when both the actor and the audience feel that they have delivered and received a message at the best time for their purposes. A simple way to think about this is to imagine your own birthday. Imagine that your best friend had to travel on business to a very different time zone on a birthday that he knew was significant for you. Rather than call you at 3 a.m. (his time), he records a thoughtful message for you (at 9 p.m. his time) and texts it to you, telling you to open it on your actual birthday. He has delivered a message at a time that suits his situation and purpose; he has ensured that you will not only receive a message from him but also hear his actual voice; assuming you follow his instructions, you will receive the message at a time that makes you feel special on your birthday. With the right forethought and care, immediacy can strengthen relationships, happening for both the deliverer and the receiver at the optimal time.

In the wrong hands, though, forethought can quickly become sneakiness; care can quickly become selfishness or even malice; and the power in a relationship that should be mutually fulfilling can tip off balance toward one side or another.

One time, a computer application that both Steve and Reshan had used in the past – and shared with hundreds of students and teachers over the years – initiated a major update. Within that update, the company planted a feature that auto‐launched the application every time users restarted their computers. This move seemed a little fishy, especially to people who had not opened the application in weeks, if not months.

As users restarted their machines from time to time, which is a recommended practice, they were then faced with a situation where they had to wait for the computer to load (expectedly) and then the application to load (unexpectedly). Then they had to take a few more seconds (again unexpectedly) to quit out of an application that they never accessed in the first place.

The unexpected steps were the company's way of – to put it positively – serving its customers by showing up immediately for them as they started computing.

These steps were also the company's way of – to put it less positively – forcing its presence back into the lives of users who weren't using it. Like the readers we mentioned in the Authenticity section, who feel a sense of unease when faced with computer‐generated poetry, these former users of the application felt a sense of unease when their needs had been cared for in a manner that seemed sneaky or deceptive – that is, they felt the effects of bad authenticity paired with questionable immediacy.

And in fact, one of the technicians at Steve's school received enough inbound complaints about this unease that he sent an email to the entire community to teach them how to disable the auto‐launch feature by going into the settings of their machines and unchecking a box. He taught them how to reclaim their immediacy from a company that had overstepped its bounds.

A few years later, Reshan saw a similar move – bad authenticity paired with questionable immediacy – emanating from beacon technology.

Beacon technology (built on low‐energy Bluetooth proximity sensors) was starting to make some inroads in a variety of settings based on its low intrusiveness and the way it would load efficiently.

Reshan paid attention when he saw this technology used in a conference setting, where the service provider inverted the use of the technology, placing phones (connected to some bigger back‐end systems) in fixed locations and putting the beacon on the badges of conference participants.

At this conference, Reshan observed firsthand as all participants became part of a tracking system that they didn't know was actually in place and as some, especially those involved with cybersecurity, blogged about the extent of the data and privacy exposed as a result of this fully networked, fully immediate experience.

While well intentioned, the delivery and communication of such a system was not well executed. This kind of unwanted immediacy, devoid of authenticity, causes people to fall off seesaws.

Immediacy has its fair share of bad, at worst, or uninformed, at best, actors. These people, wittingly or unwittingly, use its playbook to share information when it suits their own purposes without taking into account the needs or desires of their audience. Imagine the same friend previously mentioned sending you birthday wishes three months in advance because “he had a few minutes and wanted to get the message off his plate.” Or imagine him showing up unannounced on your actual birthday and insisting on throwing you a party when you were already on your way to another party. These actions might be well intended, but they are also examples of ineffective immediacy, most likely decreasing your delight.

Identify Those Who Are Bored or on Autopilot, Frustrated or Fearful

We think it's safe to say that information, products, services, experiences, and solutions will always continue to exist abundantly for audiences, and that those that “stick” will do so because they not only address a lingering issue but also add or create new value for the audience. Our sense is that problem‐solving became commoditized, leaving value‐adding – still a Wild West of sorts – ripe for innovation.

As painful as it was for us, and as ironic in a section about delight, starting by looking at examples where immediacy sabotaged delight before it even got started is crucial to understanding how to move learner‐practitioners toward it. The truth is, delight – and its joy, curiosity, and intrinsic motivation – is often extinguished before it even gets started. It requires extra effort and can be quickly doused if pursued by a shortcut, hack, or end‐around. And it has several imitators that are much easier to achieve but, like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, fizz out quickly, leaving the darkness much darker than it seemed before the flash of novelty came and went.

We've noticed that delight often starts for people who are in a neutral or negative state. They are either on autopilot (at best) or bored (at worst), either frustrated (at best) or fearful (at worst). On autopilot or bored, for example, they select a new program to watch and it doesn't just pique their curiosity, it ends up giving them a completely new way of seeing the world and their place in it. Or, another example, fed up with a work culture that is toxic and allowed to be so, they find a new job in an environment that supports their growth, encourages them to take risks, and rewards them by giving them partial ownership of their most innovative products.

Delight is often just an invitation to participate followed by the kinds of feedback loops that encourage additional, deeper engagement, and ultimately, transformation. That's why we don't see any of the previously mentioned neutral or negative states as downsides or risks; we see them as opportunities to begin again, to pivot into a pursuit of meaning.

Take it from two people (Reshan, Steve) who have faced down hundreds of ninth‐grade students on dozens of Monday mornings at 8 a.m. It is easy, even for the noneducator, to imagine the combination of slouched, eye‐rubbing, yawning, foot dragging, reluctant figures that roll into a classroom after a weekend's hiatus. Throw in some unpredictable adolescent hormones or some emotionally fraught car rides into school, and you have a recipe for disengagement.

Or, as some teachers would think, a great place to begin, especially if you're committed to delight.