Joy

Friends,

Most of us have been feeling quite down these past weeks as we experience the impact of so much cultural and personal harm being imposed on so many innocent people by the DOGE cuts and the wars. So I have decided tonight, not so much to console us, but to offer another perspective entirely, that of finding joy even amidst so much sadness.

My wife has encouraged me in the midst of these days to pay more attention to joy in my life, and it turns out to be a worthy quest. Yes, there is much to make us sad, but as I have been thinking about the importance of joy in our lives, I have realized how much daily joy there actually is if I am attentive enough to recognize and allow it into my soul. 

Many of us consider the practice of daily gratitude as central to a healthy spiritual life, and I believe it is also true of joy. Joy can also become a daily practice

I had never read or thought much about the emotion of joy, but as I have reflected on what it means I have discovered how important joy is for my mental and spiritual health. Joy is similar but not the same as happiness. Happiness seems to be more involved with a response to some stimulus that gives us pleasure. I am happy when my day goes well, when I receive a compliment or a smile; I am happy because essentially I just feel good. And the more happiness the better in our lives, of course.

But joy has a different quality. Joy is essentially relational; we are joyful when we establish a true relationship with the other, whether a person, nature or moments of awe about the mystery of life. Joy is the soul’s recognition of the unconditional sensation that we have engaged some aspect of life beyond our normal senses. It is a sense of a true relational connection. The most common examples of moments of joy may be in nature - a rainbow, the awe of a hummingbird, the grandeur of a snow covered mountain range. But pure joy also finds us while holding a newborn baby, or being deeply in love, or being completely enchanted listing to Massanet’s “Meditation from Thais" played by a solo violin. Or it’s just the simple moments in life that somehow take on a transcendent meaning like finding a dandelion blooming out of the snow in midwinter (as happened to me years ago). Joy, compared with happiness or gratitude, is not likely sustained but more ephemeral, like a momentary feeling of “joy in my heart."

I have been fascinated over the years with the question of why some people who have experienced the most hardship in their lives can also carry so much joy. I think of the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I recently watched a video of an interview with the two of them in joyful conversation with so much laughter coming from two people who had suffered so much oppression in their lives. They model that it is possible to break through the suffering in life and still feel such joy, a lesson we need to remember today.

So even in this era when a heaviness hovers over us, it is still important - perhaps even necessary - that we also establish and nurture a practice of being aware of, and cherishing, the moments of pure joy available to us. The key to finding joy is to seek, welcome, recognize, and feel the moment of grace warming the frozen places in us. The practice of joy will not likely provide courage or protection, but it will be like rays of sunshine, or the scent of springtime for the soul, melting away those frozen up places in us created by cynicism and fear that can paralyze our souls in this difficult time. And joy can be contagious. It was impossible to watch the Dalai Lama or Desmond Tutu without feeling joyful yourself. One of our important gifts, then, to our family and friends is to live as much as possible out of a place of joy and thus pass it on. Perhaps one of the most important nonviolent acts we can perform is to be joyful.

Peace,
Tom.