Today in the United States our clocks turn back. The days are getting shorter. On Tuesday, here in the US, we vote in the most divisive and important election of many of our lifetimes. The time to make the changes that can save our planet are getting shorter, too.
But all around us, beauty persists. All around us is the presence of joy. All around us is the impetus to speak the language of love and connect with the world in joy. All around us is the hope of the future.
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This is a blog about practicing joy. In these dark days, it can seem hard to summon joy, let alone practice it. But joy and love cannot exist without one another. So to practice joy is, by necessity, to practice love. And so to practice joy every day is to summon the heart within each of us that knows that there really is nothing and no one to hate, because we are all one in Love.
Anne Frank wrote, “How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve the world.”
Right here, right now — each of us can improve the world by learning to love more and hate less. To eradicate any justification to hate, and learn to forgive in love. It’s not easy. Sometimes it feels as though hate should only be met by hate and that love is some pie in the sky nostalgia for better times.
It’s not. Love is the ONLY answer.
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When we are little kids, we are drawn to grownups who haven’t lost their capacity for childlike wonder and enthusiasm. That enthusiasm and our desire to connect with it means that what we learn most easily is what our parents are most enthusiastic about — be it fly fishing or football, baking or Broadway shows. Those things we learned from that place of easy joy are the things we will always hold closest to our hearts.
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As a child, it was my mother who taught me "right" from "wrong" by putting the literal fear of God into me, and being the gatekeeper to what was good and permissible and what was not. As a child, though I bridled agains her will, it was often just easier to do it her way . . . for both my father and for me.
I was a child of immense enthusiasms. The ones she approved were usually the ones that most resembled her own. The ones she did not -- the messy ones, the inexplicable ones, the ones that smacked too much of privilege -- those became our battlegrounds. But my greatest enthusiasm -- my love for my father -- was the one enthusiasm we both fully shared.
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That phrase stopped me in my tracks yesterday.
Literally.
I was walking while listening -- as I often do -- to an audio program. When I heard those words, I stood stock still and took them in. Then I replayed them over again to go deeper.
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Joy has no expiry date. Joy never goes out of style. And joy always always connects us to who and what we love. To practice joy is to show up to this life in hope, compassion, connection, possibility, faith and grace. As such, I would like to suggest that joy is not an extracurricular activity but one of life's core curricula. To practice joy is to practice life, to practice love, to practice presence. To grow up to become the selves we dreamed of being when we were little children.
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