What is joy?
When was the last time you truly experienced it? What about the word glee? When was the last time you even uttered the word glee unless it was that old TV series? Why do we explore this today? Adults are bad at joy. For the most part, adults don’t acknowledge joy as something to experience regularly; they think it’s a vacation or scheduled “play date” with a friend or spouse. This is not joy, per se, this is “I’m so burnt out I need to schedule myself some time to play”. You can certainly do this. Odds are, this places most adults in the category of needing a reality jolt before they decide to look at what joy can actually mean for them, but even those jolts (divorce, illness, death, etc) don’t lead us directly into joy.
According to Bronnie Ware and her hospice research over a decade it appears the single biggest regret people have when dying is that they wish they’d live a life true to themselves not what other people expected of them.
Here’s your KNOCK.
I invite you to use joy as your compass for just one day. Can you allow yourself to find joy in the mundane of brushing your teeth or doing dishes? You’d be surprised how one little act of joy begets another and so forth. Using joy as your compass does not bypass responsibility; that’s where people make the mistake of thinking joy is a holiday emotion or that we must schedule it. There is a place within me I call Joyland. Joyland is open 24/7. My heart is willing to find joy in the mundane.
So I ask you, dear friends. Do you want to finish this simulation with regret because you forgot about joy? Start today. Let joy be your compass; ask yourself “what’s the most joyful thing I can do right now?” feel a pure intention in your joy and take the leap of joy. You will be “caught” and supported in realms unimaginable. Trust.
