If we look Joy up in the dictionary it’s defined as, “a state of happiness or felicity: BLISS.” But what if Joy is more than that? What if Joy is a state of being that we are never letting ourselves experience?
I guess I can only speak for myself. I know I have spent years denying myself joy and happiness. I had an endless to-do list and I thought that once I got it done, I would have time to rest – to be happy. I thought that happiness and joy were places that existed at a later point in time, and how could I not? Our society teaches us that happiness isn’t a state of being but a place that we must get to.
Think about it, how many times have you heard someone express that once they get [thing] they will be happy. Whether it’s a job, a boyfriend, a car, money, debt paid off or retirement. It doesn’t matter what the thing is, we keep putting off our happiness until we have it. And if we don’t get it we think we have lost our opportunity to “get” happiness in our lives.
When we make the world around us contingent on our happiness, we will never be happy. Other people, things, experiences, they just cannot make us happy. We have the ability to be just as happy right now, where we are, as we do standing in front of the gates at Disney World. We are beings of inexplicable joy. We are meant to be joyful and happy. Every breath is another reason to celebrate.
And I know, bad, terrible, and horrific things will happen to us. That is just part of being human. But the secret is, that we don’t have to let these things define us. We don’t have to carry around the burden of these experiences. When we allow ourselves to fully experience each moment, we can learn to see things from a different perspective. We can let joy and happiness in through the cracks that form around the event. Whether its death, murder, or an abusive relationship only we have the power to disconnect ourselves from joy, peace, and happiness. It's as simple as choosing to move forward.
Part of what we have to understand is that we have to make space to let the light in. When we close ourselves off from all joy, the light can’t reach us. We must have hope that things can change, improve, and get better in all areas of our life. As long as we have hope... the light will find the cracks.
As we begin to foster hope in our lives things will begin to happen for us rather than to us. Our healing will be accelerated because we have allowed just a tiny glimmer of hope in. It’s the mustard seed that will allow everything to change.
I have immersed myself in the dark too. I have felt the burdens and despair of life closing in around me until I was so disconnected from being alive that all I wished for was death. I know what it’s like to live without hope, what it means to deny myself happiness and joy -- trust me I spent over half my life doing it. But I also understand that it takes only a small amount of courage to change. I was listening to a podcast once and the host said something like, “All you need is the hope that possibly, maybe, something can one day change.”
That’s all you need to start cultivating hope and joy in your life. That’s all you need to begin. Just the possibility that maybe someday if the sun rises in the east and the moon sets in the west that your world and your life can change. Open yourself up to the endless possibility that life has to offer and watch it all start to conspire for you.
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