When Joy Comes To Visit Me

The longer I ponder my experiences of joy, the more I am coming to think that she has some companions that travel with her–at least when she comes to visit me. I wonder if this might be similar for you. 

I wrote in an earlier reflection about one of those companions, one which we might not really want to talk much about. Sorrow. I won’t restate what I’ve already said except to say that joy is not, at least for me, a perpetual state of being. It has its endings, and those can come with sorrow, even mild sorrow. Consider that most gorgeous sunset that surpasses all that you have ever seen. There is transcendent joy in beholding it, but within minutes you realize that it is fading away right in front of your eyes. We experience, in that moment, sorrow, even a little one. We may never see a sunset like that one every again, but wow! Was that magnificent!  Sorrow is a companion of joy. 

Several years ago, I realized after a series of events, that “joy” was not a word that showed up much in my vocabulary. That disturbed me. So, I began to search for joy in my life and ways to access it. What I found, for me, is that sincere gratitude opens the possibility for joy. The gratitude can be for a small thing or a huge thing. It just needs to be sincere. And when it is, I seem to walk through it like a doorway into a bountiful place called joy. Gratitude is a companion of joy when she comes to visit me. 

To bring this reflection full circle, I can see joy coming for her visits these days with sorrow on one arm and between her and gratitude, linked in both their arms is love. Fo me, love is the glue that links me to other beings whose presence in my life change me, move me, inspire me, encourage me to be my fuller self–and I seem to do that for them. When I experience these things through love, joy is there, because, love is a companion of joy when she comes to visit me. 

~Bob Patrick