Ringing in the Year with Joy
Every day I try to choose joy.
Every day of my life gives me experiences. How I CHOOSE to view these experiences impacts my happiness and sense of self. The gift I want to give myself daily is joy. I try to cultivate it daily in my life, regardless of the ups and downs a day may give. In life, we will inevitably experience pain, suffering, difficulty, challenges, upsets, setbacks, and death. No one is immune to the challenges of human existence. But we ABSOLUTELY can CHOOSE the lens by which we view these experiences.
Do you choose joy?
I’ll explain with an anecdote:
I was in Napa Valley with a dear friend some years ago, in the tasting room at a vineyard, wearing a cute white bandeau top and peasant skirt. We were enjoying chatting with other fellow tasters, when a woman nearby was gesturing a little wildly. When her hand connected with her fishbowl of red wine, sending the wine in the air and landing (you guessed it) all over me. From my chin all the way down my shirt and skirt, I was soaked in cab sauv. And I literally caught myself frozen in that moment. ‘Holy shit, I just got doused in wine.’ And I heard people around me gasp and then…silence. I could feel the sentiment in the air, literally, “how the fuck is this going to go down?” Maybe a catfight was about to break out, or a yelling match, or me embarassingly exit out of the room? They were all real possibilities. But I felt the tension in the air, and I literally decided to make lemonade with the proverbial lemons of the situation. I chose to cultivate joy. That’s not what went through my mind exactly, but I remembered thinking, “What would be the point of freaking out?” How could I remedy this situation…for both of us? I decided to be gracious and kind. The woman was very remorseful and the staff hopped to the rescue to help. I got some white wine (as an antidote to red wine), stripped myself naked in the bathroom for ten minutes while I washed out the red wine. (I got most of it got out, and when I washed it properly at home, the clothes were completely salvagable.) When I exited the bathroom, the woman again was apologetic, we all had a good chuckle, & had some more wine. What impressioned upon me the deepest was noticing how my reaction impacted others around me. In how I responded, I set the tone. I turned the drama into a comedy. The people I was around were impressed with how I handled the situation. The staff told me they had seen far less diplomatic responses to incidents like these, and it made me proud of how I handled it. My decision in that moment was a CHOICE. It was a choice to lighten the situation, to be forgiving, to find the fun and the crazy of it all. It’s a happy anecdote I remember warmly, and it was a good teacher for me in that moment: make the best of the situation you are in. Find the joy. Find the silly and have some fun if you can. I could have just as easily blasted her and stormed off into the bathroom. But I know that would have made me miserable inside. I knew it was an accident, and I would have felt shitty if I had done that to someone else.
Joy just isn’t something that happens upon us. It is something that we have the ability to cultivate daily into our lives. Just as we can choose to sit in misery and dysfunction, we can choose to cultivate joy. I’d say it’s probably easier sitting with your innate negative bias, but joy is SO much more rewardsing and fulfilling, it’s a practise that always pays back in large dividends. And it keeps me present. All we truly have is today. How do I want to experience joy on a daily basis? In a delicious meal, on a sunny walk, on a phone conversation with a loved one, with a moment of quiet in the bath? All these moments have the capacity to bring us joy if we allow joy to reach into our lives. Cultivate joy mindfully and purposefully.
Joy is accessible to us. Love is accessible to us. Prosperity and abundance are accessible to us. But we have to believe we are worthy of them, we deserve them, we are capable of them, and there is enough for everyone.
It’s truly our humanity that causes our own suffering. We are our own worst enemy. We believe we are bad. A variety of social doctrines have taught us these constructs over time. From a scientific perspective, we have biologically evolved with negative bias—we focus on what is missing, not what we have. This kept us humans safe in the past, but is hindering our present and future. If we could live daily, habitually from a place of goodness and gratitude—and embrace our own divinity (our Godself within) and grow that goodness, not just because it serves us and everyone we touch with that goodness and gratitude, but because it is our gift from our Creator, from God. That goodness, that divinity has been gifted to us. It’s our direct line, our direct connection with our Creator. It’s been given, and it’s our choice to figure out what and how we use it, if we choose to use it.
We are meant to be happy. Do you think we’ve been put on this planet with all we have, just to be miserable? Happiness is accessible to all of us. Happiness is also a daily practise. It doesn’t magically befall us, it’s our responsibility to cultivate it on a regular basis.
Just like a garden, we are responsible for cultivating the things we want to see and experience in our lives.
Society inferences this belief that we have to fight for happiness, we have to struggle for joy. What if we have it already inside of us? It’s there, waiting for us to wade through the muck and garbage of negative experiences we’ve collected and decided that is our truth. Clean out your emotional basement and see that joy and happiness is within us all. We create or destroy it. We’re taught we have to fight for joy, we have to fight for happiness, for goodness in our lives. But what if we already are good? What if we already have joy and happiness? We just have to acknowledge that paradigm and give our energy to it.
Can you find joy in a sleeping baby, or a song from a bird in a tree, or the sunlight creating diamond sparkles in the snow? Can you find happiness in a morning coffee or a giggle from a family member or friend, or in a nourishing meal? Can you find it in a snuggle, or a good book, or watching a teenager giving up their seat on a bus for a senior? Can you find joy in a piece of music, or in the expression of dance, or a well-executed baking of bread?
One thing I think that this whole COVID-19 experience has taught us, in different ways, is that life is fleeting, and happiness doesn’t come in big packages. I’m not saying big events or gestures can’t bring joy or happiness, but happiness is can be found in the daily moments of each of our lives—- IF WE CHOOSE to see it. I can jump in my car and head to work and hate my one hour long-ass commute and grumble each day about how much time is wasted in the car and how much I hate driving and how much money is wasted on gas and contributing to the destruction of the planet; or I can choose to enjoy the sunrise on my daily journey and enjoy an audiobook or a language tape and appreciate the dedicated time I have to develop personal growth, learn, and experience nature every morning, because I am choosing to reframe the lens of my life. Which viewpoint will enable me to experience joy, and then, as a result, share my joy with others? How do you WANT to see and experience your life?
Gotta take time to literally, ‘smell the flowers’. How many things get lost in our day-to-day life when we are too busy to oberve and find joy.
Do you see the joy in your life, or do you dismiss it?
How can you reframe your world to create more love, joy, and abundance?
photo by Mohammed Nohassi (via Squarespace)
Know that we can choose to reframe or recreate constructs that nourish our own emotional, mental, and spiritual self.
Create beliefs that are aligned and manifest an experience of abundance, joy, and happiness. We get one ride on this planet, so why not live it in full-out joy? I choose to create a life that has joy and happiness, every day, because at the end of the day, to me, that is what truly matters. I’m not dismissing that there will be pain and suffering in my life, but I am deciding that pain and suffering will not rule my life.
