Remember Joy?                                                             Osireion Home

January 2008

Remember joy? When is the last time you felt that irrepressible sprite bubbling through your veins? Or maybe you have been keeping joy at arm’s length because you still labor under the impression that joy and happiness are a mathematical equation. You know the one, where You + Being Nearly Perfect = Joy.

Hello – stop the train! This is a ride that goes nowhere and is easily deboarded once you realize its destination. Gee, if joy depended on so complex and ambiguous a condition as being good enough, positive enough, loving or hardworking or physically fit . . . well, the list could go on, couldn’t it?

Try a new way of thinking and believing. Tell yourself every day, “I Deserve Joy!” Every glorious day that your body rises one more time, showing a miraculous hope and trust that the day holds promise and meaning. Every day that there is yet one more song you have not heard, one caress left to feel, one smile of gratitude not yet beamed in your direction.

Approaching Imbolc, or the feast of Brigid, we are very conscious of the morning dark that still lingers as we leave for work, and the dusk that tugs on us to get home early at the end of each day. Many people suffer from the cold and lengthened dark, fighting depression till the sun grows longer and warmer in spring.

David the Psalmist sang that even when the night seems to go on forever, “joy comes in the morning.” That image of joy breaking forth with the morning light kept me going through many years of depression and disappointment. Who knows whether joy was speeding my way during those difficult times, or whether I manifested it through my tenaciously-held hope? No matter, because spring came, hope blossomed, I was renewed, and my joy was fulfilled.

Joy is its own kind of spirit, existing independent of our ability to generate emotion, even though we think it is something we conjure when the conditions are right. By remembering joy, relishing joyful times and things of beauty, that unique spirit begins to make its home with us. Soon we learn that Joy can be our constant companion and lover, whether or not the sun is shining at our house.

Last night the temperature dropped below 30, and I am bundled against the cold as I write. But on the way to the street with the recycling this morning I discovered daffodils nosing up through the mulch. The sky was bright with promise. Anything is possible today.

If your night is long, go back to the beginning, think back, remember . . . remember the excitement of newly arriving in this world, of your life blossoming like the spring crocus, of all things being possible. Remember Joy.