Joy is Life Living Through You

Today I’m sharing one of my all-time favorite poems with you. As a photographer who fell in love with the beauty of life when I began picking up my camera and really looking carefully at the world, it resonates deeply with me. I especially love the line

Joy is Life Living Through You

I know I’ve shared the poem here before but I believe that good poetry is worthy of repetition. So here it is again.

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing

He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive —
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn’t matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

  — Roger Keyes

Writing About Joy

This year I began working on writing a book about joy. But I’ve been feeling stalled out in writing it for over a month now. Reading Hokusai Says this morning reminded me that I want to continue to write about joy whether or not I ever manage to complete a book about it.

When I meet life clearly as it is without expectation or judgment, I discover joy. And when I meet life with all of my expectations about how it should be (and often isn’t) I experience the opposite of joy. In my mind the opposite of joy is suffering—it’s the pain of wanting and not having, of resisting life’s flow, trying too hard to be something I’m not, and never measuring up to some intangible measuring stick of shoulds that exist only in my imagination.

As I read the line, “Joy is life living through you,” the truth of it vibrates in me. Many people equate joy with being happy. Joy is bigger than happiness because it encompasses experiencing the full catastrophe of life—happiness, sorrow, love, loss, grief, pain, fear, beauty, ugliness, light, darkness, the world, everything.

Joy is the noticing, feeling, doing, loving, of life and the cycles of life including death.

Life lives through us.

I agree with Hokusai that everything is alive even rocks and mountains. And I believe that life learns about itself through every living thing (including mountains, rocks, oceans, and creatures).

Experiencing joy in life living through me means recognizing a both/and world. Yes, I see incredible stupidity, ugliness, meanness, loss, and grief. But I also see wisdom, beauty, kindness, goodness and light. They are all part of the beautiful whole of life.

If you watch nature closely it is not a Pollyanna story of lightness and beauty. Life feeds on life. And life goes through cycles of birth, flourishing and death. The life that was feeds the life yet to emerge. There is no end to life, simply a series of transitions. I don’t know what is on the other side of death for sure (though I know what I believe) but I don’t fear death. The dust of my dissolved body will eventually become another living thing and then another but I believe my essence will remain.

We are all a part of the web of life learning about itself. And though it shocks me to see it, there is even a stark beauty in the swoop of a hawk capturing a song bird for its next meal.

Life brings us so much to experience, feel, and discover in our short life spans. I wish you the joy of life living through you. And I wish you joy in experiencing the fullness of it all.

May you walk in beauty.