Joy is Still a Thing

Long story to arrive at my point today. Bear with me, because I will get there!

The Backstory

Something my family and I haven’t publicized much on social media is that we decided to buy a house! Because what else do you do during a pandemic but decide to move all your worldly belongings? Smart, right?

Anyway. The upshot being that the last several weeks have been packed with house-purchase-stuff which is entirely new to us, and trying to get packed for the move which is now in less than a week. Not only has that wreaked havoc on my blog-writing and podcast-posting schedule, but it brings me to my actual point.

First thing is that we have been following Heather’s advice and decluttering as we go. This past weekend, the 1-800-GOT-JUNK people hauled away 3/8ths of a truck of donatables and garbage. Just the accumulated result of years of stuff that you somehow collect, but don’t actually need. Did you know they will donate your stuff to the charity of your choice in addition to taking away the garbage? Neither did I. Now I do.

Anyway, the second thing is packing the stuff we do want to keep. As I was diligently packing up coffee mugs using copies of old New York Times newspapers, I came across a story, called 14 Ways We’re Finding Joy. It’s actually a collection of multiple articles by several different authors.

At any rate, it made me think.

These times suck. No doubt about it. Wearing a mask sucks, being stuck inside sucks. Feeling like your civil liberties are being infringed upon sucks. Worrying about your health, or your loved ones health, sucks. Worrying that someone else not as careful as you might get you sick sucks. It all. Just. Sucks.

Even so, there is joy to be found.

Finding Joy By Thinking Small

Whether it’s the joy of a perfectly packed box of coffee mugs, or the almost unbelievable joy of anticipating new house ownership, the joy of seeing my houseplant come back to life, or even just the joy of sitting down at the end of the day and feeling healthy and whole with my beloved family, there is joy.

So much of what we experience in life is not just the things that are happening to us, but our perspectives on what is happening. In a lot of ways, I feel like we will find what we look for. If we look for the negative, that’s what we will find. If we look for the joy, we’ll find that too.

What I love about this series of articles is the deliberate intention behind finding something to be joyful about. Whether it’s the joy of jogging very slowly, the joy of perfecting the sexy selfie, or – my personal favorite – the joy of consuming an obscene amount of calories by noon. Things I never thought I’d be joyful about, there really is joy there. If you look.

Many of the things in the list of 14 things are small, simple things. Joy doesn’t come only from the huge, big things in life. We can find joy in the small, every day things also.

Gratitude and Joy

We talked before about gratitude during our journaling theme. Taking the time to journal or otherwise track your gratitude each day is good for your health and mental wellbeing. Well, I believe that we can also track our daily moments of joy. Those little moments that brought us a little something, even if the rest of our day was decidedly not so joyful.

Think about at the end of all this, what do you want to remember? The trauma, horror, and sometimes sheer boringness? Or the moments of joy you found in those seemingly every day moments, maybe even those that you might have taken for granted before all this started.

Over to You

In that vein, I have had three moments of joy today:

• Indulging in a chips and blue cheese and bacon snack this afternoon
• A perfectly worded email
• Finishing this blog post!

What’s yours?