Little Moments of Joy

I once asked a friend who worked in my building why she was so happy all the time.  You know the type–bubbly contagious laugh, always smiling, finds humor in most things.

Her straightforward answer surprised me. She said, “I have a lot of joy.”

Now, Julie wasn’t being simple. She has a master’s degree and is a full-time college instructor. I think she’d been asked this before and had given it some thought. But I had to think about her answer. Why didn’t she say, “I guess I’m just a happy person”?

Merely accepting that the world is made up of all kinds of people was too easy for me. So I asked myself: do I have Joy? Why doesn’t my Joy show like Julie’s? How can I increase my Joy?

We all get into ruts of negative thinking where we focus on all the things wrong with our lives: not enough money, too fat or too thin, family problems, etc. I think once we accept that problems in general are universal and all we can do is battle them one day at a time, we can move on to increasing our Moments of Joy. In an effort to do that personally, I’ve categorized Moments of Joy into Big and Little.

I’ve been oh-so-lucky in life in a big way. I’ve had many many Big Moments of Joy. More than my share. But because I’m a problem solver, my Big Moments of Joy in the past have been over-shadowed by what wasn’t perfect. I was sabotaging my own Big Moments of Joy by letting little problems get in the way.  Now that life has slowed down a bit (just in the last 6 months!) I’m going to re-savor those Big Moments of Joy by listing them here, and in the process hopefully release, albeit belatedly, some of that effervescence that negativity kept a cap on:

Big Moments of Joy

1. Finding my second husband on the internet. (It sounds like he was lost, but he wasn’t.) Our six months of long-distance courtship was pure heaven to me in its wonder and excitement and anticipation. All that . . .  before we ever met in person!

2. Raising two children. In spite of a short, troubled first marriage, I knew I was meant to be a mom, and I loved it. Still do. Raising children is one big, long Moment of  Joy that tends to be clouded by the problems inherent in raising a family, especially if you’re doing it alone. I’m still learning to focus on the Joy and not the problems.

3. Getting a Ph.D.  It wasn’t the piece of paper but the experience that was truly thrilling in a hard-work-has-its-just-rewards sort of way. Plus, I made life-long friends in my classes. I’d go back to grad school tomorrow if someone else was paying for it! To study what, I don’t know. 

4. Opening two restaurants. Opening the first was especially thrilling, as I not only built it from scratch physically, but the concept and menu as well.

5. Buying a house in the country. The house we’re in now has been a dream for a long, long time. I’m constantly having to pinch myself to remind me of that, like when I’m surveying rotten boards on the greenhouse that need repairing, or frowning at the stained, pink  30-year-old carpet in the master bedroom that needs replacing.  (See how the problems creep in? But I also hear birds singing outside my window, there are two fat, happy goldfish in the pond I always wanted, and two acres of old oak trees shade this old three-story house that has separate guest quarters. Serious Joy!)

Those are just the highlights. I have Little Moments of Joy as well:

1. Feeding my chickens. (Read my other posts to see the extent of this Joy.)

2. Cooking. (Ditto)

3. A fire in the fireplace. We have two fireplaces, one upstairs and one down. I was at first dismayed that they weren’t gas, and therefore would require real logs and real cleaning. Until I built the first wood fire of the winter. Oh the smell!  And the dying embers and all that rot. Pure, simple, hearth-felt joy, pardon the pun. Historical joy. How many pioneers, how many cowboys have felt that same joy?

4. Sun on my face (with little to no wind). Sorry Lubbock, you deprived me of more than a few Moments of Joy because of your blasted wind.

This list could go on and on. Obviously, most of us spend our leisure time doing things we like, but are they Joyful?  Get away from the tv and computer and actively cultivate your Little Moments of Joy.

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