Describing the Ground of Joy I

After several weeks of brainstorming, reflecting and noticing, Jenny and I feel ready to begin to enumerate what we think might be the conditions that enhance or inhibit our natural tendency to experience joy.

When we create our conditions list, we try to keep the process engaging and fun. We don't expect our list to be perfect, fully comprehensive or precise. We don't worry too much about wording. We leave our terms very open. For example, we find that joy is enhanced by energy flow. What is energy flow? While we don't come up with a precise definition, we still might imagine practices that enhance flow, such as dancing together or creating artwork.

Here are four conditions from our working list in no particular order:

1. Feeling connection – this might include connection to nature, to other people, a sense of being part of things, of being accompanied, a sense of affection, a sense that one is in one's "right element," in short, whatever sense we have that is the opposite of feeling alienated.

2. Energy flow – where there is more physical, creative, emotional, or even intellectual flow, we tend to feel more joy. When the energy is restricted or bottled up, we tend to feel less joy.

3. Whether joy seems "appropriate" to the situation – we may feel that a situation is too "serious," or perhaps we feel that we have been unproductive all day and don't deserve to feel joy. We tend to hold back our joy if we think the situation doesn't call for joy.

4. A sense of basic freedom – this might mean a freedom to move, to act on impulse, to relax and let go, to make mistakes, or some other sense of freedom.

We continue our list in the next entry.

Joyful Body

We danced together on an empty, semipublic beach on the Connecticut shore. A passerby on a bicycle cheered us on. The following day the passerby, this time in a Mercedes convertible, stopped us on the street and applauded. The joy, it seems, was infectious.

We have been wondering about the connection between joy and our physical bodies: the surges of energies, the feeling of warmth, the impulse to dance or jump or shout. We are noticing how joy, whether exuberant or calm, whether intense or light, seems to reside in our bodies as a warm and energizing flow. When we connect to joy, this physical flow always seems to be there. We are surprised at how easy this flow can be, at least at times, to rouse. And we notice how contagious the flow seems to be once it is generated. So why don't we rouse it more often?

But Seriously ...

Jenny has been realizing that she associates joy with superficial or unproductive. If work is joyful, then it is fun but frivolous. It can't be producing anything of real value. Emotional growth, or the gaining of any kind of insight or understanding, needs to be painful or it isn't substantial. If it isn't "serious," then she can't take it seriously. As we do this exercise, we are beginning to challenge the dichotomy between serious and joyful. What does it mean to be serious? Can joyful also be serious?

As an art student, Jenny once shared with her teacher that she saw the process of making art as one that needed to entail great suffering. Otherwise, she could not feel that she had reached anything "deep" or worth saying. Her teacher suggested that she probably wasn't going to find being an artist a whole lot of fun. As we investigate the ground of joy, noticing what enables and what constrains our natural capacity to be joyful, we are finding that there are many different kinds of joy, some passionate, some bittersweet, some energetic, some calm, and so on. We wonder if there might not be a joy for every occasion – a sad joy, a cool joy, and perhaps even a serious joy. We leave it as an open question.

Noticing How Joyful We Really Are

We are finding that we are more joyful than we might have thought. By allowing our awareness to settle on the conditions which enable or hinder our natural capacity for joy, we are discovering how many fleeting moments of joy we have that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

This summer's recent heat wave is over, and every so often a cool breeze wafts by, soothing our foreheads, cheeks, necks. What a relief! The moment comes and then is gone, but it is so delicious while it lasts. Then the mind comes back in with all the worries, thoughts, and plans for the day. It is these afterthoughts that we remember when Jenny and I recount our day.

But there are many such delicious moments. Finding a new ripe tomato on our porch plant, listening to the gentle rain outside our window, watching Ruby's delight at sounding out the word "palindrome." And whether we remember them at the end of the day or not, we notice that these punctuating moments of delight nonetheless lend their taste, their flavor, to the texture of our mindset and view, allowing us to be a little more open and spacious.

Joy and Connection

As we contemplate joy, we are finding a strong interplay between the feeling of joy and the feeling of connection. For example, we might be drawn in by a thing of beauty, feel a wave of affection for a friend, connect to the sacredness of a quiet moment, or experience the awe of the summer sky.  Sometimes we are connecting to our bodies through exercise or dance, other times we are participating in a group project that has meaning to us. And somehow, perhaps, we just feel a part of it all.

Yesterday when the temperature reached 104 I decided to take a dip in the local pool. The water was still and blue, and reflected the green leaves of the shade trees above. I was alone and it was quiet. My body soaked up the coolness and the quiet like a sponge. I felt fully immersed. That for me was a moment of joy.

Do we ever experience joy without connection, or connection without joy? We are curious to explore this interplay further, between us and within the larger group. For now, we leave it an open question.

Journey to Joy

When we start a new virtue, it's always thrilling and daunting at the same time. We wonder, "what will there be to say?" Isn't patience just a matter of being able to wait, compassion just a matter of being able to care, joy just a matter of generating positive feeling?

We picnicked in a local park, spring rolls and pineapple and carrot salad, a Metropolitan Opera recital within hearing distance. The air was finally starting to cool after a very hot day. As usual, we didn't so much define joy as talk about when we have felt it and when we haven't, what conditions seem to foster it and what seem to hinder it. This is what we call the ground of joy.  I talked about kayaking and Jenny talked about leading a parade. We talked about times with our family and times with our friends.

Our investigation has already begun to surprise us. We find that for us joy is not incompatible with sorrow; in fact, they can be good friends. Joy seems to be most hindered not by sadness, but by disconnection and alienation. Joy for us involves a sense of freedom, of flow, of connection, and perhaps the feeling that no matter what happens on the surface, deep down there is something basically right with the world.

We look forward to continuing to till the ground of joy.