Good soil

No further instructions

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

A lot gets said about joy. Being the wellness person that I am, I have really doubled down on trying to figure it out over the years. Still, I can’t say that all my effort to master joy has really resulted in more of it for me. It’s like joy refuses to be trapped in the joy catching devices I rig up after reading a bunch of books.
 
So needless to say, it resonated when I read the other day that the surest way to be unhappy is by constantly striving to be happy. And it resonated again a few days later when Beacon Health Wellness Coach Kristine Taylor suggested that “joy doesn’t arise so much as it is revealed,” during the meditation she was guiding for Catch Your Breath, the twice weekly 10 - minute breathing break we co-lead. She went on to explain: “It is most available to you when you are available to it.” I take this to mean it’s like not understanding that doing the laundry is actually joy. The moments that we get that are the moments it has been revealed. The mind can mask the joy that is always there.
 
Always in favor of a good set of instructions, for a couple of weeks I’d been musing over what being available to joy meant I would actually and in specific be doing when, in that suspicious way the same message keeps circling you, a co-worker passed this from Oscar Wilde along to me:
 
“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
 
That kind of stops you in your tracks. Maybe it’s just that simple. Maybe it’s just making sure the soil is good and the sun isn’t blocked. Maybe there is no trick.
 
E

"Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, it may alight upon you."

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Eli-Butterfly,-Dolores-Foster-(1).jpg

tea.png