Real Moments. Real Joy.
Every story in The Joy List actually happened. These are some of the moments that shaped it — the ordinary instants that turned out to be extraordinary.
More stories and photos being added. Every story below actually happened. They're organized by the chapter where you'll find them in the book.
Introduction
It was early morning. The fireplace was lit. Matt was reading in his favorite chair when he looked to his left and found his Golden Doodle Harley sitting there — eyes fixed on his, mouth open in what could only be described as a smile. Without warning, tears.
"Nothing extraordinary has happened. But in that moment, I feel something deep and unmistakable. It isn't excitement. It isn't relief. It's joy."
Chapter 1 — What Is Joy
Hiking down from the Gornergrat summit in Switzerland with the Matterhorn directly ahead, Matt and Jane heard something they couldn't place. A low, resonant sound bouncing off canyon walls. Around a bend, a man stood on a cliff above the Riffelsee playing an alphorn — that long wooden horn from the Ricola commercials. Except nothing about a commercial had prepared Matt for what it sounded like in person.
"His playing moved through me in a way I am still not entirely able to explain."
Chapter 1 — What Is Joy
Eight years old. A toy helicopter called a Vertibird. Weeks of anticipation, a sustained lobbying campaign that only a child with nothing to lose could manage. On Christmas morning, there it was. Within three minutes of assembling it, it broke. The happiness — intense, overwhelming — was gone instantly. That is the lesson: happiness can be broken. Joy cannot.
"That is happiness. External, fragile, entirely dependent on the toy cooperating."
Chapter 1 — What Is Joy
Their first restaurant. Four kids at home, no safety net, months of twelve-hour days. Then, alone in the store on Christmas Eve, Matt broke the glass window on the pizza oven. A stranger at the oven company answered the phone after hours and promised to ship the glass that night. And at home, someone had left an envelope on the porch — two hundred dollars in cash. A tree they'd cut themselves. Eight presents. The vice let go.
"That's when joy arrived. Not because anything had changed. But none of that was where my attention was anymore."
Chapter 2 — Opposition in All Things
Two days before ninth grade started, Matt's parents moved the family from Huntington Beach, California to Delta, Utah. Two days. Eight years of friendships, swimming pools, and knowing exactly where you stood — gone in a summer. They moved into a singlewide trailer next to the mortuary. Matt slept on the couch. Delta had one stoplight, a painted water tower, and kids who had grown up together their whole lives. Matt was the shorts-wearing kid from California, small for his age, and an easy target from day one.
"That was the other thing about Delta. It gave me something Huntington Beach never would have — freedom. Real, wide-open, nobody-is-watching freedom."
Chapter 2 — Opposition in All Things
Every September: Logan, Utah to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. 206 miles, three mountain passes, 9,200 feet of climbing. One year, after a summer of training with Aaron and Brett, everything unraveled — one teammate's heart, another's cramps, and finally Matt's own legs giving out 25 miles short of the finish. Jane and Bennett drove out to bring him home along the Snake River as the sun set. He has finished this race, and he has failed to finish it. The wave that hits afterward is the same either way.
"The tears I have shed after this race — after finishing and after failing — are not the tears of someone who got what they wanted. They are the tears of someone who was fully alive for a day."
Chapter 3 — Your 11 Bestest Things
A Saturday morning in Pocatello, Idaho, in a small house on Lewis Street. Jane wanted a midwife and a home birth. Matt was twenty-four and had never been present for a birth of any kind. They walked the floor for hours; the midwife put Jane in the tub; and then their daughter was born. They named her Dallis — after an Alan Jackson song, chosen before they even knew if they were having a girl or a boy.
"That was joy. And sitting next to the bed while Jane held Dallis, I understood for the first time what my body had been capable of feeling all along."
Chapter 3 — Your 11 Bestest Things
Early morning on the Strip, before the crowds — when it belongs to joggers, landscapers, and janitors. In the Palazzo, Matt looked down and really saw the floor. Then the Bellagio Atrium: Mother Nature herself built entirely from flowers, giant bees, giant eggs, every element living and assembled by human hands. The list item that came out of that walk surprised him.
"The mosaic tile and the granite floor and the Bellagio Atrium are the same thing expressed differently — a person who cared enough to do the work with precision and intention, to make something worthy of being stopped by."
Chapter 3 — Your 11 Bestest Things
It started with a plain rectangle of a house in Provo, a Gurney's catalog, and a twenty-by-twenty garden. Pumpkins grew so large that four-year-old Dallis could sit on top of them. A bleeding hearts plant arrived looking almost dead — and then bloomed exactly as the catalog promised. Years later in Rexburg came the greenhouse, and a solo trip to the nursery (solo, because Jane has never seen a plant she didn't love), and rows of petunias in every color.
"I see the hand of God in flowers. I always have."
Chapter 4 — Thoughts Are Living Things
A summer afternoon, the backyard loud with kids, and three friends — Matt, Rob, and Vance, friendships tested by decades and held — slipping out front to the shade. Adirondack chairs, hanging baskets, flowers everywhere, and a conversation about ideas that went somewhere none of them had planned. Nobody performed. Everybody left slightly better than they arrived.
"The porch was the setting. But the porch was never the point."
Chapter 4 — Thoughts Are Living Things
A 55K trail race tracing the Continental Divide outside Salmon, Idaho — 7,600 feet of climbing, a two-mile scree field at 10,000 feet. At mile eighteen, Matt's friend Nephi bonked. In country that remote, there was no easy way out — so they went on together. Electrolytes, a steady pace, and fifteen miles of small words placed against dark thoughts, all the way to the finish line.
"So I kept talking. Not loudly. Not urgently. Just steadily. One word against one dark thought, over fifteen miles, until we crossed that line."
Chapter 5 — Gratitude
She lived across the street in Huntington Beach, and in the summers Matt spent more time at the Carters' house than his own. She hummed along with the parakeets when they got loud. She brushed out Prince, the miniature collie, on the porch steps — humming. She moved through her house with a kind of ease Matt had never seen in an adult before. Years later, her memory forced an honest accounting.
"I wasn't a happy person. Not miserable, not broken — just not happy. Not the way Bertha Carter was happy. And for the first time I decided to do something about it instead of just wondering."
Chapter 5 — Gratitude
The youngest of eight children. A brother lost in an accident Matt was too young to remember. A garage stacked floor to ceiling, six-foot weeds, money talked about the way people talk about money when there isn't enough. And also: a father in the bleachers at every single Little League game. A pool at eight years old. A camper, campfires, late-night card games. Two people doing the best they could with what they had.
"I choose my memories. Not to pretend the hard ones don't exist — they do, and they're mine. But I choose which ones I build my life on."
Chapter 5 — Gratitude
At eighteen, Matt drove hours to see a girl he liked — and her father met him at the door and said she wasn't home. She was home. He cried most of the three-hour drive back in the dark. A few years later, delivering pizzas in a Geo Metro, not in college, not on any particular path, he noticed a server who came in through the back door every day. He asked her out. She said yes. Her name was Jane.
"Someone chose to stand next to me and make me feel whole in a way I had never managed on my own."
Chapter 6 — Living in Awe
A standing meditation on a quiet trail. Eyes closed. Birds, wind in the trees, and — with enough focus — water moving down rocks all the way across the canyon. Then movement in the brush: a porcupine, nose down, entirely unconcerned. And up on the canyon wall, a line of trees that had endured winters, wind, and isolation for decades, still growing, still reaching, adding beauty to a scene no one might see for weeks at a time.
"I gave those trees my attention. My thoughts. My gratitude. And I felt something return, not metaphorically, but actually, physically, in my chest. A warmth. A fullness. Joy."
Chapter 6 — Living in Awe
It started with a poster on a bike shop wall in Sandpoint — a forest so green Matt assumed it was the Redwoods. "That's a trail near Priest Lake," the owner said. The next morning: twenty miles of gravel almost to the Canadian border, a bear crossing the road, and then Upper Priest River Trail #308 — bone-cold clear water, moss-covered stone, singletrack padded soft by years of fallen cedar cones. And a tree, nearly 800 years old, with Jane standing beside it.
"It was a magical place. We had been on many breathtaking rides together. Nothing compared to this."
Chapter 6 — Living in Awe
They'd glimpsed the Sagrada Família from a tour bus window and traded the same unspoken thought: we have to come back. So the morning after the cruise ended, they rented electric bikes and rode to it. Pictures don't prepare you. Neither does the bus. Later that day came the Casa Batlló — a house where nothing is straight, nothing is expected, and every curve and tile was made by hand.
"The moment you come around a corner and the building appears in full — not a portion of it, not a detail, the whole thing — something happens in your chest before your mind has time to form a thought."
Chapter 7 — Intention
Fifty times down the same stretch of parkway near the St. George house. Then one afternoon, in the late light, Matt looked up — and there were sand dunes on the ridge above his own neighborhood. He knew those dunes. He'd ridden them with friends in college. They were part of his history, and they'd been sitting right there for six months while he drove past without once looking up.
"That is all intentional living actually requires — the decision to keep looking."
Chapter 7 — Intention
Every year, two days — usually Jackson Hole — locked in a hotel room with planners, calendars, and whatever books the year brought. Then the BHAGs. One year Jane said, "I want to hike the Appalachian Trail." News to Matt. She started in January and walked 600 miles. His BHAG that same year: an email to a building owner that became Sparks BBQ. Two people, one planning meeting, two very different big goals — both accomplished.
"A goal without a why is a task. A goal with a why is a direction."
Chapter 8 — Designing Your Life
Weeks of 90-minute scouting drives into the mountains outside Ashton. The fifth wheel, the menu, the rented side-by-side, eight motorcycles, six of the boys' friends, and Indie asleep in the RV. Then one afternoon all the chairs were pulled into a circle, the boys sitting with full bellies talking about their dreams — and Matt stepped inside the RV and just listened.
"We orchestrated this. Jane and I. Not the campsite — the tradition."
Chapter 8 — Designing Your Life
Fear took the whole first half of the hike — Refrigerator Canyon, Walter's Wiggles, Scout Lookout, all of it wasted on a mind rehearsing turning back. Then the chains, and the step where both sides drop to the canyon floor, and a sweating hand grabbing hold anyway. At the top, joy arrived like a physical thing. He has hiked it five times since. The fear isn't managed. It's gone.
"Fear steals the hike on the way up. Joy waits at the top. And once you've felt the joy enough times, fear stops having anything to say."
Chapter 8 — Designing Your Life
At 12:30 a.m. on January 1st, Matt was on the Zion Canyon Campground website securing a riverside spot for a 40-foot fifth wheel — nine months out, with no idea those months would hold the entire Sparks BBQ buildout. Through every twelve-hour day, October 3rd sat on the calendar, already paid for. When they finally pulled in beside the Virgin River with Jon and Heather, he sat down in a chair and didn't move for a long time.
"The harder I pushed, the closer October got. The closer October got, the harder I could push."
Chapter 8 — Designing Your Life
A weekend visit from their first grandchild, a basket of books Jane can never stop adding to, and Indie wanting to sit on Grandpa's lap and read. He read a page; she turned to the next. Then something made him slow down: the illustrations. Detailed, full of life, frame-worthy — in a toddler's book, where nobody required that level of care. Somebody did it anyway.
"I wasn't scheduled to experience awe that afternoon. I was just a grandfather reading to his granddaughter. But the list had trained my eyes, and when the moment arrived I was present enough to receive it."
Chapter 9 — People Not Counted
April 2, 2025. Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio — a base the size of a city, a grandstand full of families, and a graduating class in OCP camo spread across the field. Bennett spotted him first. Carson, sharp and still in formation. After the ceremony, the families came down to the parade grounds, and after eight weeks of held breath, a father hugged his son and the tears came.
"It's joy. The specific kind that only comes from watching someone you love grow into themselves."
Chapter 10 — How to Spread Joy
July 23, 2022. Headlamps at the Timpooneke trailhead, a moose a few feet off the trail, a buck watching from a clearing. Jen's legs seized before the saddle — an electrolyte pack, a slow return, and a choice to keep going. At the summit shelter, in a book holding thousands of names, she added hers. The smile in the photo at the top is the kind you can't fake.
"Joy. Not the joy that comes from what you've accomplished yourself — the kind that comes from helping someone else experience this mountain, this view, this moment of finding out what they're made of. Shared joy. It fills you differently."
Chapter 10 — How to Spread Joy
October 2025: Jane, sister-in-law Linda, and her friend Linda — two weeks through England, all of it planned by Matt. Scones and clotted cream at a tiny café on the Falmouth waterfront. An RAF helicopter flying the length of Lake Windermere right over their cruise boat. Edinburgh Castle. And a private early-access tour of Westminster Abbey — just the four of them in the Quire while thousands waited outside.
"That is a moment you can't manufacture by accident. You have to plan for it. You have to know it's possible."
"When you know what's on your list and you know its shape, you stop waiting for the big moments and start finding the small ones."
— Matt Smith, The Joy List