Joy is Necessary

I’ve heard folks say, “How can you be joyful when the world is such a mess?” And some days I too wonder how  to be joyful.

But I believe that

Joy is Necessary

every day, even when things are falling apart—especially when things are falling apart.

Joy is as necessary as breathing.

Being grateful, spending time in nature, hugging my husband, seeking out and experiencing wonder, and making photographs (that’s my joy bringer, what’s yours?) are the greatest joy bringers I know.

In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy.

   — Brother David Steindl-Rast

You may ask what has prompted this pondering about the necessity of joy today of all days.

Tulip petals falling, March 58th (see yesterday’s post), not feeling well, war in Ukraine, climate change warnings, growing violence in our nation, and the murder of a 10 year old girl in a small town in Wisconsin, who was simply riding her bike home after playing with friends. All of this feels heavy and sad, yet a little bit of gratitude, joy, or wonder balances the scales so that I can continue to notice everything, even the unbearably sad parts of life.

Joy is necessary. Loving the world just as it is, is as necessary as breath. Feeling it all, and allowing yourself to feel it all is necessary.

Any Common Desolation

can be enough to make you look up

at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few

that survived the rains and frost, shot

with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep

orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird

would rip it like silk. You may have to break

your heart, but it isn’t nothing

to know even one moment alive. The sound

of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant

animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.

The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.

Warm socks. You remember your mother,

her precision a ceremony, as she gathered

the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,

drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath

can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,

the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything

you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves

and, like a needle slipped into your vein—

that sudden rush of the world.

   — Ellen Bass, from How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope

…”it isn’t nothing to know one moment alive” my friends. It isn’t nothing.

May you walk in beauty.