What is the source of your Joy?
If you can begin to think of Joy as a discipline, something you can practice until you get more skilled at it, then you don’t have to wait until perchance something happens that causes you to feel joyous. If you consciously direct your attention to all that is true and beautiful and good, and if you open yourself to various opportunities to act in love, you will come to understand that you can become an active participant in your experience of Joy. It is not a random or capricious emotion that we are able only to feel at times if we are fortunate enough to be standing in its path.
We readily accept that we can live our way into gloom or sadness or depression. Why cannot the reverse be true? As we expand our awareness of the minor avenues of Joy, increasingly we can develop our capacity to live our way into greater Joys.
“I am thinking of what I have learned to call minor ecstasies, bits of star dust which are for all of us, however monotonous our days and cramped our lives, however limited our opportunities.
Everyone has these moments, more or less often, according as they are recognized and cherished. Something seen, something heard, something felt, flashes upon one with a bright freshness, and the heart, tired or sick or sad or merely indifferent, stirs and lifts in answer. Different things do it for different people, but the result is the same: that fleeting instant when we lose ourselves in joy and wonder. It is minor because it is slight and so soon gone; it is an ecstasy because there is an impersonal quality in the vivid thrust of happiness we feel, and because the stir lingers in the memory. Fragments of beauty and truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye and the receptive spirit to become the stuff of authentic minor ecstasies. - Elizabeth Gray Vining
Yes, the proverb is true: If you keep a green bow in your heart, a singing bird will come!
The following is my attempt to put into poetry this idea of being open to all the ways that Joy and Love can come to you, and also the necessity of being willing to actively engage in those “minor ecstasies” or loving acts.
Move beyond your narrow limitations of who deserves your love, just as the Hindu woman did the story told by Mother Teresa.
Pay attention, look around you, appreciate what you find! Practice Joy.
Think about it— Something can be breath-taking only if you stop long enough to take a breath. Breathe deeply.
photography and poem © A. Rutherford
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