Compounding Joy

There’s an assumption I have noticed since I was young. It is the assumption that as you build a life, joy is something you have to work to obtain, or even so something we get around to. Growing up and becoming a healthy functioning adult equates to letting go of silliness, and letting go of carefree. The more we accomplish, the more we strive to accomplish, the more routine paths we trod down, the more we obtain. Thats how its suppose to go. I wonder how often we stop to tend to joy. Often times, if not tended to I think we’d find our joy as tattered as our childhood stuffed animal we carried around. 

Joy is treated like a reward awaiting the far end of a to-do list, something we can have after we work ourselves bone tired. Like a dessert we allow ourselves after we make ourselves choke down our veggies. 

Joy, I posit, does not work like a reward. It works like a nutrient. 

With the right ability to notice, I believe joy can be stumbled upon. Often times I believe it is something we have to intentionally cultivate or exercise, like a muscle. Implement like a supplement. 

Culturally we are trained to chase joy in large doses. The big vacation, the bigger promotion, the big celebration. These things are wonderful, however they are often paired with rarity, expenses, and wholly outside of our daily control.

If we only expect to be open to joy when we are on vacation, or haul in a big purchase, I imagine alot of us will find ourselves joy deficient most of the time. 

Small joys are, quite wonderfully, available on a Tuesday. Small joys don’t require a budget, a plane ticket, a milestone or a promotion. They can be found in the droplets of dew on the grass in your front yard, a cup of coffee made and enjoyed slowly instead of gulped rushing out of the house. Its right there in a few pages of that book you’ve been wanting to read. It's on the sidewalk of that path down the road, and in passing that love-filled dog. It's right there in that very specific feeling of writing a letter, smoothing the stamp and knowing it will make someone's day to read. 

Supplementing joy into our daily lives isn’t always waiting for the to-do list to be done, or for smoother waters. It's not the absence of struggle. It’s about letting joy have a prominent seat at the table of your heart, and conversing with her. Feeding her. Nourishing her. She can be there right there in all of life. Joy cannot be considered something that is conditional. Conditional on everything else being fine, or where you live or what you have or who you have it with. Joy is that faithful friend, there, right there, awaiting to be interacted with. 

Joy is more of a practice than a mood. It is a gift given to us that we can choose to cultivate. Most of us have a handful of things in our lives that reliably lighten our hearts. What are yours? Mine usually are a hobby I love, a slow-paced moment, a frolic through a particular town, or hugging a particular friend, a walk on a path I love. Taking a moment to feel the sun, even feel the rain. Daily it is drinking my tea, listening to a song that hits just right, or even just opening up my windows in my home. The practice isn’t juggling or discovering something new, it's practicing what I know already works. 

I have very high standards of excellence in how I live, move, relate to others, practice my craft, but I have a very low threshold for what I allow to bring me joy. It's nothing I consider I have to work for or earn, or hold an expectation that it has to be efficient to be worth it. I just let joy be found wherever my feet are standing. At this moment, it is in the same ole sweater I reach for like a uniform in my studio, having my little duck-shaped lamp lit at my desk, having a favorite spot of tea in a favorite mug, and letting myself journal. Funny, though, I scheduled this. Every Tuesday, we write. (Why do I say we when I mean me? HA) I know I love writing, I know I love exhorting. I know I love joy, and coming up with ideas to implement it daily. I love talking about it to others - the bliss of holding on to and keeping afloat the simple ways to give ourselves a dose of joy and play. I love this discussion. 

I love that joy isn’t something difficult. It’s not something to try and find the time for like another to-do. Its usually just making the time. And here is my favorite part- letting that time be small. I believe a minute here, a five minute joy there will out-perform a five-hour or five day joy twice a year. 

Joy can’t work as a twice a year dose. Our lives and the life in our lives is vital to everything we set our hands and heart to. Life is one thing, but a life with small, repeated moments of genuine pleasure built into its structure is another thing and starts to feel and operate differently. The baseline shifts. 

Thats the main idea I have on my heart today. Joy isn’t about some grand gesture, it is about noticing and making sure the smaller joys aren’t optional.  It’s not waiting for life to feel light in whatever we are juggling to allow lightness in, it is about letting it in little by little and letting it grow. It’s about milking every chance we have regularly, and on purpose. Deliberate joy, in what we notice, what we are grateful for, what we speak, how we love, how we receive love, how we move through the most mundane daily practices. Joy is there. 

Somedays it can look like very little to me - a drive home with my windows down, Five minutes to sit by the window with my coffee and watch the birds. Something we allow daily whether or not the day has earned it. 

What are your shoe-in joys? 

Here are my shoe-ins. Notice how they can happen any day, and take a few minutes.

Lighting a candle at the dinner table. Buying a $5 bouquet of flowers at the grocery. Putting on a tinted lip balm even if my hair is a mess. Driving a different way home. Trying a new cheese. Hahaha. Writing a letter and keeping stamps in my wallet. Looking the cashier in the eye and asking them how their day is going. Sometimes its deliberately leaving my phone at home or in the other room. 

There are a few quotes that I had come to my mind while I was writing this, I’ve added them below. 

“Two natures beat within my breast. One is foul, the other blessed. The one I love, the one I hate. The one I feed will dominate.”

Can’t remember who wrote this, but I love and notice in myself how the more I consume something, the more I crave whatever I’m consuming. If I consume worry, that bad boy grows. If I consume peaceful light hearted expectation, I look for good everywhere and find it. If I feed resentment, it spreads in my mind, heart and straight out my mouth. If i feed love, it gives me a bounce in my step a  sparkle in my eye and arms wide open. 

Here is the other quote that came to mind, of course by Mary Oliver.

"We've trained ourselves to glance and not see. But that is precisely the purpose of the human soul, to deeply witness. Anything less, anything too busy to see, becomes mere existence. Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? While the soul, after all, is only a window, and the opening of the window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep."

I like to think of this journal space as an expression, a reflection. Mostly I notice it feels more like a way of rambling to find the point that's knocking at my heart. Either way- thank you for reading. Would you share in the comments below your favorite way to cultivate simple joy. 

Now, I'm off to make a joy pitstop before painting at easel. It is the joy pitstop of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on my sourdough focaccia slices i brought to the studio. Ah, the bliss.