1 The pilgrimage
"At the end of high school, three of us backpacked across Europe for three months, and the whole way we carried jackets and ties in our backpacks. We'd identified the cheapest Michelin three-star restaurant in France - Charles Barrier, in Tours - and made reservations weeks in advance.
"We walked through the door in our jackets and ties, and the first thing we noticed was that nobody else in the restaurant was wearing jackets and ties. So we'd carted them all around Europe for nothing.
"But the staff recognized that we were people delighted to be in their restaurant and dedicated to making a fuss about it. And at the end of the meal, they led these teenagers who'd been sleeping in parks and train stations on a tour of the kitchen."
2 The blues bar
"There was an ex-biker bar in Calgary called the King Edward Hotel that had been turned into a blues bar. The best blues musicians played this dive and you could be dancing and watching Buddy Guy pluck his notes from three feet away. It was totally unlike going to see someone at the Air Canada Centre: no light shows or video screens.
"There was something about the intimacy - the lack of pretension, cheap draft and greasy smells from the kitchen - that took you back to where these guys started."
3 The handyman
"I'm not a handyman. I'm slow and inefficient, and I always make one outrageous blunder in assembling anything from IKEA. I repainted our basement one Christmas holiday. It was a hideous, ugly green that my wife disliked; all the baseboards were badly caulked; there was tons of trim. It took me several days of sanding, caulking, painting, two coats on the ceiling, the walls, the trim. But I did it, with no screw-ups.
"One of the themes of my book is the value of well-rounded life, that you don't just focus on one type of good. I spend a lot of my time thinking about philosophical topics, so I like it that I also have the occasional clumsy, home-handyman achievement."
4 The best schnitzel
"When my mother arrived in London as a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia in 1939, she found work with an Austrian aristocrat who taught her to make schnitzel with pork tenderloin, sliced twice through the middle. She used a frying pan, but I prefer a deep fryer because that's how my cousin made it when I went to Prague in 1986.
"Many things that are valuable to us combine several components of the good life in the same activity. So I get the pleasure of eating something delicious, the achievement of knowing how to make it properly, a recipe I don't fuss over. I'm also continuing something taught to me by family members, and maybe I can teach it to my son. Though right now he's a vegetarian."
5 Silence
"I'm with an old friend, driving in a car and knowing I don't have to say anything. We understand each other well - we don't have to impress each other or wonder what the other is thinking. Each of us can be comfortable in the other's company, and no one has any doubts about what the silence might mean. This complex mutual knowledge is a part of the best friendships."
6 Helping someone
"A Canadian philosopher named Bernie Suits wrote a wonderful book about the nature of games called The Grasshopper that wasn't appreciated outside a small circle. I was able to bring it back into print just before he died.
"There's a tradition that says everything we do is motivated by our own pleasure. But in this case, there was nothing in it for me. I just wanted to help this book and its author get the recognition they deserved."
7 Aha!
"I was away at a conference, talking to a philosopher friend without realizing the structural similarities of our theories. Thinking back on the conversation in a darkened plane, it just hit me: There was a connection. I was so excited, I wanted to jump out of my seat, run up and down the aisle.
"Everybody has these 'aha' moments: You're putting together a bookcase, the bits in your hand don't make sense, and suddenly they do. There are grand examples when someone like Newton or Darwin unifies phenomena that were thought to be different. But then there's also the moment when I realized, years after watching both shows, that The Flintstones was a rip-off of The Honeymooners."
8 Skiing
"Standing at the top of Lake Louise on a frigid morning looking out at the Rockies and being about to take the long plunge down the front face of the mountain. It was my first year of teaching and I was under a lot of stress. But I didn't have classes on Friday, so I'd get in my beaten-up Toyota, drive to the mountains and get this pure release.
"An exhilarating experience may not be connected to anything larger in life, it may not make you a morally better person, it's just a wonderful moment in itself. My intellectual colleagues at Calgary looked down on downhill skiing as bourgeois and suburban. They thought cross-country skiing was more authentic. I preferred to go fast."
9 Camp
"When our son Alex was 7, we sent him to summer camp, an experience I wanted him to have because I'd gone for many years and then worked in camps and seen how they helped kids mature. Still, when we went to pick him up, we were nervous about whether it had worked for him. Then he came running to see us, healthy-looking, excited, showing us all the fun things he'd done.
"So he'd had a great time and also seemed more mature than he'd been a few weeks before. But it was also good for us: We'd helped him grow and, in particular, helped him grow on his own, away from us."
10 Leafs lose
"Philosophers want the world to be rule-governed, but the things that matter to us in life and give us pleasure are often highly accidental. I grew up in Toronto as a Montreal Canadiens fan, all because of a random remark my father made about Rocket Richard when I was four years old.
"As a kid, I took a lot of abuse for being a Habs fan, so every time the Leafs lose, I get this little bit of pleasure. It may not be an admirable pleasure, but it's a completely reliable one - the gift that keeps on giving."
John Allemang is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.