Giving Joy a Voice

"Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all."

---Robert Louis Stevenson

Joy. Who doesn't love some joy every so often? No matter where you fall in politics, income, social status, or anything else external, feeling that sense of happiness is a gift. I'm not talking about the average ordinary contentment of a beautiful day, or just being satisfied with the status quo. That's all well and good, but joy, real soul-lifting, unrestrained happiness doesn't come about that often, but when it does? Literally, full stop.  Shut it down, whatever you're doing, and close your eyes so you can drink in that moment. It's rare, it's magical, and it matters.

There's been a lot of less than joyful moments lately. A divisive election has found parents, teachers and public officials sniping at each other, in person and online. The weather has, well, sucked. If it doesn't stop raining soon, I'm going to need a rowboat to get out of my driveway. The Bruins didn't take the Stanley Cup, and someone dinged my car and didn't leave a note. None of these things are tragic, or even more than just minor annoyances. The thing is, even something trivial can put us in a bad mood, to the point where we couldn't find a joyful moment if it jumped into our laps.

Joy is fleeting; it's like the perfect wave that washes over your toes in the sand on a sunny beach day and is gone, just as quickly. It's finding the last few French fries at the bottom of the bag when you thought they were all gone. While little aggravating experiences can ruin your whole day, the same is true for tiny bits of joy. They can turn a day around in an instant. So many times we get caught up in what has gone wrong, what we don't have, what we didn't achieve. Why don't we spend that same kind of energy, time, and effort in celebrating when a day has gone well? We stomp around, venting and crapping about whatever inconvenience or downturn that happens, but do we take the same amount of time to appreciate joy? To pause when something lifts us up, and to revel in it? We all have jobs to do, difficulties to deal with and responsibilities to fulfill. We "have to" to get so much done, day in and day out. Someone told me that a better way to look at it is that we "get to" do all of this work. We get to wake up every day and take on the world, or just go grocery shopping. We get to drive a car around to errands; we get to go to a job, we get to make dinner, we get to watch reruns of I Love Lucy late at night while eating chips in bed. OK, that might just be me, and while it's not the healthiest habit, it's fun.

Joy shows up in the most unexpected places. In my kitchen, there is a door that leads to the cellar and the backyard. It was always the spot where I would back the kids up to take a picture. There are hundreds of happy snaps taken there — Halloween costumes, Easter outfits and so much else. The door rattles when it's windy; it's full of scratches and dings because the dog bashes herself against when she needs to go out, and it needs a coat of paint. But it's also the spot where hundreds of little moments of joy have been preserved. That damn door makes me happy, even if it does look pretty worn out.

In what seems like another lifetime, but was just 1983, barely a few yesterdays ago, I was at college, with some friends. We were walking back from class, laughing like fools about something none of us remember all these years later. One of my friends looked me right in the eye and said, "You are such a joy."  I won't ever forget it, because I was thinking the same thing about my friend at that moment, but I didn't say so. Pro tip: If you are in a moment with someone, and there is this kind of joy, give it a voice.