How Joy Empowers Us
Living in joy is the ultimate goal.
I don’t want to spend my time at a desk, working for someone I might not entirely respect, doing something that bores me. Life is just too short for that. Rather, I want to do something that makes me happy.
Have you ever been told that “You have to work for a living” or “you gotta do what you gotta do” or “you have to make ends meet” or similar? Likely, I suspect you have. How come we so readily accept that work should be joyless and soul-crushing?
Think about it. Even if you are not working at something that isn’t ideal, how many people do you know that do? How many friends and loved ones complain more about where they work than not?
How come we accept this? Why have we decided that it’s perfectly ok to spend the majority of our waking hours being unhappy?
Yes, we can argue about “responsibility” and “being an adult” and on and on. But consider this: we are only in these bodies, on this planet, for about a century – give or take a decade or two. While our essence is energy, and will not be destroyed when we pass away, in these meat-popsicles our time is finite.
Not only is our society fear-based, but it’s also lack-minded. We are inundated with messages that there is not enough, that we have insufficient supplies, that things are lacking. This in turn leads some to hoard all kinds of things, and deny others because of this mentality.
Joy is a matter of abundance.
The universe is abundant. Despite our being constantly told that it’s not, it actually is. We are capable of manifesting pretty damned amazing things, when we get out of our lack mindset.
This is something I have been working on for some time. I tend to get caught up in the lack mentality, and because of this I have spent a great deal of my life indecisive. I couldn’t decide what I actually wanted, so frequently made no choice at all. In my possession are many old journals, where entries from my thirties are all about being down, lacking satisfaction and joy and so on.
For years, I would tell you that my theme song was U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. This applied to my home, job, relationships, spiritual state, financial state, yadayadayada. I complained a lot, questioned everything, and felt very alone.
What changed? I started to take action. As I have mentioned many times, Pathwalking was borne of a New Year’s Action, to begin to write weekly. From there, I began to take on this idea of conscious reality creation and making choices. Lo and behold, I started to experience changes I wanted to see.
I got into a stable relationship. There was a job I mostly enjoyed. The SCA continued to provide me with an outstanding social outlet. I was writing, and began to see works published. I began to truly pursue my joy.
How come I didn’t do this sooner? In part, because I believed when I was told “writers don’t make much money” and “you can’t make a decent living as a writer” and similar. Most of these statements were made to me not maliciously, but “for my own good” and to help me make choices along the way.
Joy is too important to ignore.
We tend to give our pursuit of happiness and joy a lot less attention than we should. We have accepted the narrative of our society that happiness and joy come in small doses. While I acknowledge that it’s impossible to live in joy all the time, I still want to experience it more frequently than its negative opposites.
I know that I have to earn a living, that I need to contribute to society in a productive manner, and always strive to do my best. What I do not accept is that I should spend most of that time discontent. Must I accept that the majority of my day should be spent doing something that is unsatisfying, and leaves me unable to experience much joy? I say no.
You can go ahead and call me irresponsible. I accept that society largely will think I am crazy for working on conscious reality creation to manifest a joyful life. But when all is said and done, the ultimate goal I believe everyone is in pursuit of is joy.
Changing the lack mentality and fear-based society we live in can feel really daunting. This is why it starts with each and every one of us. When I stop feeding the lack and fear machines, and instead empower the abundance and contentment engines, I believe I can help empower others. It is not selfish to seek abundance and joy for ourselves when we act on sharing it.
Abundance for joy.
I am working on taking a new approach to my day. When I start to feel like I am lacking, I will actively work on focusing on abundance. I will use gratitude for the things I have, and see the abundances of my life. Even the little, easy to take for granted things are a matter of abundance. Rather than focus on things I don’t have, I will work on focusing on gratitude for the things I have.
Viewing the world as abundant instead of lacking is something we can all do to change it. We can’t ignore the problems of the world, but instead of lamenting them, we can work on making our own individual lives abundant and joyful. I think this is totally a worthwhile goal, don’t you?
As always, thank you for crossing the bridges with me.
GOAL LOG – Week 36:
Diet: Mostly back on track, writing it out again.
Exercise: Fencing two days, one day at the gym, one energetic hike.
Writing: The three blog posts were done; a blog post to my author website; a couple days of writing in the sci-fi story.
Meditation: Five of seven days last week, never less than 10 minutes.
Gratitude: I was grateful for 5 things a day, over 5 days.
This is the fifty-first entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series. My collectively published writing can be found here.
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