Saturday, February 1, 2020

I just got back from having coffee with a dear, sweet friend. We have a pretty consistent coffee date most Saturday mornings, and I have to tell you, it is an amazing time to just sit and chat and philosophize and dream and complain and vent and discuss and rehash and talk about Jesus and theology and ... man!  Everyone needs a girlfriend or two like her. I am so lucky to have a handful of women with whom I can have such conversations.

After a pretty lengthy coffee sesh this morning, wherein I am relatively sure I twisted her ear nearly off with all sorts of venting (even though I wasn't/am not in a bad mood ... Lord help us all with this menopause stuff!), I was walking back to my car and had a book in the window of our local bookstore grab my attention.

Now, I don't remember the title of the book; it was the tagline that caught my attention ... "The Art of Cultivating Joy."

And it IS an art, y'all!  And it made me really think critically my entire drive home -- and I took the scenic route so that I could chew on that tagline a bit.

I have been thinking a lot about cultivating joy lately.  Maybe it's because I am 20 days away from 48, and your middle/late ages seem to bring with them this need to shift priorities. And the question continues to be, "Am I cultivating joy?"

Okay, maybe that's not what my question has been up to that point....maybe, it's because I wasn't exactly sure how to even form the question correctly.  Today, however, that book title's tagline put into tangible words what I have been struggling with for a while now .... that being my ability (or complete lack thereof) to cultivate joy for myself and those closest to me.

I use to think that cultivating joy meant working so hard that others would see my dedication and recognize it. In every single job I've had, I have explored and exploited that theory.  The thing of it is, no one really recognized it, and if they did, they never stopped to see what followed that up, which was my completely unhealthy self hiding behind it.

There was a time I thought cultivating joy meant that all I needed to do was gather a large group of people around me who thought I was wonderful and told me so as much as I possibly needed. The problem with that idea was that all of those accolades were shallow and meaningless.  Those people didn't know me,  not like I think we all desire to be known and accepted. Oh sure!  It's nice to feel validated and appreciated by the people that seem to hold the keys to professional or personal validation, but at what cost?  All the shuffling and maneuvering I did only exhausted me more than it provided me joy.

My sweet friend has chosen a word that she wants to work on this year rather than create a list of resolutions. When I heard her word, I was all, "OOOOOH!  I want to steal her word."  Intentionality. That is her word. But honestly, it didn't quite seem to fully represent what was rolling in my head. However, Cultivating the Joy," that makes sense to me, and, by default, I suppose there is an intentional piece that naturally accompanies it.

I found the quote above about a satisfied life the other day, and boy! does it ever tie in with what I have wrestled with over this last month!  I want to feel the joy of every day life. I want to find the magic in moments that are not extraordinary by definition, but are so just because it was a moment in time.

Of course, this is likely going to make some assume the worst of me, and that sort of assumption cannot be avoided. I am willing to live with the fact that some will not see me as dedicated or others will see me as having incorrect priorities or silly dreams or that many will find my life inconsequential. I really am okay with that because joy is a multitude of magical moments that woven together create the fabric of our lives.  I would much rather have a life tapestry that is an explosion of chaotic color than something in a monochromatic scale.

No one else can truly measure my joy.  So explosions of chaotic color it is!