Letting joy win. This has become a kind of mantra for me lately. However, my inner lizard Ozzie rolls his eyes at the whole idea. He would be totally on board with chanting “Let Joy Win” if my name were actually Joy, but it isn’t. Especially because that lizard is ob-sessed with winning, and so totally misses the spirit of joy. All Oz really sees is “blah blah WIN!!!!” Otherwise he would be content to snooze through this whole blogging adventure.
But if I always listened to my lizard, I would never be able to write the premiere post of this blog in the first place. Because Ozzie is fear and ego all wrapped up in one cuddly, reptilian package. And can I just mention how intimidating it is to post for the first time? How buoyed I’d feel with some archive under my belt? Well, Camus said that “all great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning” so I’ll just wing it and hope for the best.
Okay, so the mantra. Have you ever experienced a fleeting moment when you felt a delicious flutter at the sheer joy of being? A joy that radiates out from deep in your heart, without any actual reason for existing? I’ve been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it, and sometimes the feeling even lasts for, oh, a whole second or two, before thoughts and worries and doubts creep in casting a shadow over the whole sunshiney moment. It’s like there is some moody creature lurking beneath the surface just waiting to leap out and pounce on my rays of joy. (Ahem, Ozzie!) Well, one morning I was meditating and had a sparkling moment of inspiration.
Let. Joy. Win.
Now I should clarify that I am not a particularly savvy meditator. I’ve flirted with it, we’ve had a few very short, casual flings. It wasn’t until I committed to Martha Beck’s Joy Diet that I started incorporating it into my daily routine. I felt a lot more relaxed plunking down for the daily dose of “nothing” the book prescribes than I ever felt attempting formal Meditation. And I still never know if I’m doing it right. Some mornings my mind is leapfrogging all over the pond, and no sooner do I coax it back to stillness before it hops off to another lily pad.
In fact, this morning while I was “doing nothing,” my mind was eagerly trying to write this post. And noticing that my mind was thinking about writing about how I don’t really know how to meditate while I was actually meditating just about blew my mind. But then… even just noticing the hyperactive hopping tells me I am grazing the surface of awareness, that I’m tuning into a presence within me that’s able to watch my thoughts. And every now and then I reach a startling moment of clarity. Like let joy win.
So… best of luck with that. All we have to do is let joy win. Pretty simple, really.
Yeah, right. Maybe learning to let joy win isn’t so much simple as it is a lifelong journey, and I hope to use my blog to talk about it. At least that’s the idea I have in mind from this inaugural point of view. I believe joy is always present, happily bobbing along the current of our lives. And I want to keep discovering and sharing how we keep it afloat. Along with some humor, inspiration and creativity sprinkled throughout.
You know, nothing too ambitious.
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