Joy

I’ve been spending the past few weeks thinking about my 2022 theme of “Joy” – and what it is I mean when I speak of Joy and bringing more of it into my life.

Joy and happiness are related feelings, but when I talk about bringing more joy into my life, I’m not talking about happiness.

I don’t live in a constant state of happiness, and I don’t aspire to live in a constant state of happiness. The nature of life is too complicated for that to ever be possible (and I suspect constant happiness would get boring after a while). I’m a fairly content person, but I definitely have my moments of feeling sad, anxious, annoyed, stressed, or just flat. We are in the middle of our 2 1/2 months-long busy time at work right now and I am logging 9-10 hours each day sitting at my dining room table and sometimes I just want to let loose with a primal scream. We are still in the midst of a pandemic. I am grandmother to a puppy who is about 65% pure cuteness and 35% utter chaos. And by all measures the world is pretty screwed up (as it always has been). 

Joy, to me, is that sudden buoyancy of spirit that you feel when you encounter something delightful, or awe-inspiring, or hilarious, or beautiful. Your day can be quite dull, or worse, and along comes some unexpected (or planned) thing that lifts you completely out of your circumstances, if only for a moment. And the wonderful part is that even the memory of that experience has the power to bring you joy. Which is why I want to create a Joy Journal – to list all of the things that have brought joy into my life. And to revisit them when I need a little boost.

Joy can be brought on by small things (blue skies and sun after several cloudy days) or life changing things (the birth of your child). The thing I love about joy is that you can experience it even in the darkest times of your life. I remember many years ago I was in a very sad and difficult time in my life. It was late at night and I was awake, sitting in my living room, thoughts racing. I happened to look out the window, at my snowy front yard, and a buck with an enormous rack slowly walked along and stopped right in front of my window. I felt such awe and gratitude for the experience of seeing such beauty. Seeing the buck didn’t change the circumstances of my life, but for that one moment it brought me to a better place. I’m still grateful to that buck for stopping by. 

Some things that have brought me joy lately:

• We have had a couple feet of snow on the ground here since Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I dug a path and a track for Pokey in our back yard. It cracks me up every time I see him racing around the track. He loves it so much. It reminds me of when I used to create elaborate mazes for Sam with sidewalk chalk on our driveway.
• The other morning I was walking Pokey down our street and we heard a strange animal call – Pokey actually looked up at me as if to say, “What the heck?” It turned out to be a huge pileated woodpecker. I hardly ever see them around here, and this one zigzagged from one side of the street to the other for a while before heading to parts unknown. 
• Watching the potted tulips on my kitchen counter grow and bloom out. 
• Watching videos of Peter Gabriel’s 1994 Secret World Tour (especially Solsbury Hill and In Your Eyes)
• Sara Bareilles singing Many the Miles on a houseboat (especially when she forgets the lyrics and just goes with the flow)
• Pokey sleeping in my lap
• Snowy hikes in local parks
• Laughing at something silly with my mom during a phone call
• Seeing my friend Beth’s smiling face when our weekly Zoom call connects
• Sunny days and the sun on my face 
• Finishing a blog post after a dry spell 🙂

See you soon, friends!

Love,

Michelle xoxo