How do You Find, Make, and/or Take Joy?
The choices and decisions all belong to you.
The world is crazy. Spend any time reading the news, scrolling social media, or even walking around any given neighborhood, and the uncertainty, fear, and constant reminders of division/separation feel like they dominate everything.
The narrative of the collective consciousness, if you are at all attuned, feels unnecessarily dark. It feels like people are rejecting kindness, compassion, and empathy en masse. Messages about how they make you weak and unworthy are screamed so loudly that it’s almost impossible to miss them.
I think that’s all smoke and mirrors and bullshit. Those who see kindness, compassion, caring for others, and empathy as weakness are either the minority or have allowed their reason to be overrun by that minority. Why do I believe that? Because I have never met a single human being who doesn’t desire to receive kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring.
The struggle is real. While knowledge is power, walking the fine line between knowledge and too much information (TMI) is an ongoing challenge. We need to know what the elected and unelected officials and other leader-types are doing so we can protest them, boycott them, vote for better than them, and so on. But the deep-dive into every little hideous nuance only stirs negativity that disempowers us.
In the end, you choose to be dragged into a pool of despair – or – to find, make, and/or take joy.
The choices are yours
I’m not you/you’re not me. My struggles and challenges aren’t yours, and vice/versa. What makes me feel good might not even ping your shields. The degree of privilege I recognize that I have might make it way easier for me than for you. These are all true.
Yet you and I have the same power of choices and decisions. You’re empowered to examine your life, learn who, what, where, how, and why you are. Then, you have all the power to accept that, or reject it and change. Or not. The requisite choices and decisions are all yours.
What makes a choice or decision easy or hard is as variable as the weather, motivations, experience, and all the other things that make each and every one of us singular and unique. But the truth is always the same. You are empowered to make choices and decisions.
Admittedly, sometimes a given choice or decision feels limited, like it’s between the lesser of two evils, and not much of a choice at all. Yet there it is, awaiting you to act on it.
Or not.
How you approach any given day, with joy or trepidation, is ultimately on you. And it is seldom, if ever, a constant.
The definition of joy
What is Joy? According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, joy is
(noun) 1a: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires
b: the expression or exhibition of such emotion
2: a state of happiness or felicity
3: a source or cause of delight
(verb): to experience great pleasure or delight
In summary, joy is an emotion of possessing what one desires, an expression of that emotion, a source of contentment or happiness, and an experience. Joy goes beyond mere feeling, it’s a sensation that ties to not just your 6 senses, but also your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions.
Joy is intangible. It’s something you can’t see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. Yet those senses are capable of evoking joy.
What the definition fails to define is what finds or makes joy. And that’s because it varies from person to person. What’s more, even intangible as it is, it comes in an astounding variety of sizes, shapes, and forms.
For example, the sunlight on my face after multiple days of grey and rain is joyful. My cat curling up on my chest and purring, especially when I’m feeling anything other than positive, brings me joy. Savoring the taste of a really amazing caramel helps me feel joy.
Nothing in this list is out of reach. And that’s where the power we all have to find, make, and/or take joy gets lost.
The machine is a demanding master
Too many of the messages of life today force us into unnecessary busyness. Which, when you get right down to it, is all about distraction.
Distracted people make few to no decisions or choices, allowing rote, routine, and habit from the subconscious to do the driving. People get so caught up in what is deemed “important” and “necessary” by society at large that they neglect to work out what brings them peace, contentment, and joy.
Material things might take part in that. Yet material goods are not, in and of themselves, the source of joy. Joy comes from an intangible place and is frequently tied to kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring.
It also seldom needs to be big and important. As per the above definition, joy is the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.
You’re empowered to find, make, and/or take joy. Doing so is not selfish, it’s empowering. That empowerment opens pathways of positivity to be a more consciously aware participant in your life. And if you’re not driving your life experience by making your own, mindful choices and decisions, then who is?
Finding, making, and/or taking joy isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that you have the power to make choices and decisions to direct your life, you can decide for yourself what brings you joy and act to find, make, or take it where you can. Knowing that you can choose and decide to be in a state of joy – or a state of fear and uncertainty – and that joy is in no way selfish, you can use active conscious awareness to find, make, or take joy where you can to enhance your life experience.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. From that broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, that can spread to those around you for their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred-and-eighty-ninth (589) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.
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