Joy……..
pure unadulterated joy….the kind that
begins at your toes and works its way throughout
your whole body, filling you with well being.
How can we describe it? Better yet, how
can we get it?
For
me, like many, living in a state where emotions
have been shut down, it has been a learning
process, a process by which I had to begin
to find others to trust, and to trust my
own feelings. Tall order? You bet!! And
worth every tear!!
Joy,
to me, feels like hundreds and hundreds
of bubbles effervescing in my tummy and
spreading outwards to encompass my whole
body in aliveness. Joy is not something
we can get or buy, but like love, the more
we give away, the more we have!! It is contagious.
When others see it in us, they want some,
too. Joy is the natural result of trusting
ourselves, I mean really trusting….
and letting our intuition be our guide.
So
often in life, we shut down that which we
judge as inappropriate. We can get a feeling,
say, of wanting to go to the beach and play
in the sand. This idea pulls us, but before
it has a chance to grow, we sometimes stifle
it, the voices in our heads providing a
variety of reasons why we cannot do this.
My experience has been, that if I take the
chance and listen to the one reason why
I want to do it rather than what the voices
say, I get to experience this joy we are
talking about. I have realized that those
voices are just words. Words, based on what
other people have said, what they believe,
and that I have taken on, whether or not
they really apply to me and my situation.
Joy
also naturally follows when we do “I
want to’s” instead of “I
shoulds”. Again, “I shoulds”
are the result of what we have been conditioned
to believe. When I trust my intuition and
give myself permission to do my “I
want to’s”, I experience joy.
This can be as simple as sitting quietly
in the sun watching a bee dart around a
flower, or a butterfly flit through the
air in all of its grace and beauty. It can
be as big as a vacation in solitude where
you can do exactly as you please when you
please. It doesn’t matter what it
is. What matters is that it is something
you want to do, something that speaks to
you, maybe even shrieks to you, that you
would really like to do this thing. It will
be much easier to do if you try not to judge
it, and do not take on the judgments, if
any, of others. How many times in our lives
have we not done something because someone
else has minimized its importance, or totally
invalidated it? Remember…they have
their beliefs and you have yours. They get
to choose for them, and you get to choose
for you, that which brings you joy.
Another
sure way to experience pure joy is to find
ways to laugh!!! Sometimes the need to laugh
has been so great and I have not paid attention
to that particular need. My psyche has looked
after me by bringing me laughter in my dreams.
While I can’t always remember the
dream, I do remember the laughter and feel
much refreshed for having had the experience.
I have since gone on to look for laughter.
Now don’t laugh! O.K. You can laugh!!
I mean I really chase it down. I read the
funny things in Readers’ Digest, which
can be found very cheap in second hand stores.
I look for jokes and cartoons on the Internet,
and share them with my net buddies, who,
in turn, share their jokes with me. I have
sharpened my wit by using it when interacting
with friends and acquaintances. I even laugh
at things that aren’t funny to others,
but which I find amusing. Sure, they might
think I’m a few bricks short of a
load, but that doesn’t matter to me
nearly as much as the joy that fills my
body when I experience that laughter. And,
to share the thought put out by Leo Bugscalia,
when people think we’re crazy, we
have a lot of leeway in our actions. They
just think, “Oh there goes that crazy
Lin again!”
Joy
is all around us. We just need to look for
ways that work for us to tap into this unlimited
resource. Joyful hunting!
