Notes On Joy

One

What do we do when the life we counted on to make us happy disappears? When the routines we followed faithfully are upended? When suddenly on a dime, change or loss forces us to confront the uncertainty in our hearts?

If you’ve tried to lean on platitudes recently, like “Just live in the moment,” or “Have faith,” you may have had the sober realization that maybe you’ve only been paying them lip service. Because now when shit’s gotten real, they’re not exactly helping.

Don’t worry. It’s not just you, and everything is suddenly confusing. Learning to really live in the moment is hard and takes practice during hard times. Having faith is borne out of moments when we don’t feel faithful.

Yet deep within every single one of us, no matter what our circumstances, lives a joyful heart. That heart connects you to your intuition and to your purpose. And often, dark times can redefine and awaken our ability to bring joy to everything we experience.

Two

When our lives are caught up by the first waves of loss, grief takes all of our energy. Adapting to and accepting what is, is a monumental task. Especially if the change happens fast and we are having a hard time reconciling with how different we thought it would be.

This is really hard work. And when joy shows up unexpectedly in the middle of it, when real honest-to-goodness happiness manifests itself in our lives, it gets super confusing. How do we integrate the sweetnesses, small kindnesses, and generosities that are also happening to us and around us?

We allow it all. We give ourselves the gift of ease that comes from stillness. We stop trying to make it all make sense. Simply put, easy and hard go together in these times.

Deep within every single one of us, no matter what our circumstances, lives a joyful heart. That heart connects you to your intuition and to your purpose. And often, dark times can redefine and awaken our ability to bring joy to everything we experience.

Joy can seem like a luxury when we travel through times as uncertain and challenging as these, but it’s actually essential if we are to respond to our own lives and be able to transform within them. Whether the path is difficult or smooth, everything that happens in our lives can lead us to become more intuitive.

Three

Our culture is thoroughly hamstrung in the area of joy. We put limits on how happy we’re allowed to be all the time. And it’s when we’re in a crisis that we especially forbid ourselves to find any joy or humor whatsoever in our experience.

So how do we claim joy in times of crisis? In moments of historic turmoil?

We stop fighting joy as if it’s a moral issue. You are not required to earn joy by suffering. Your pain and your joy can exist side by side.

Don’t force them into a cage match to the death.