Over the past year and a bit I have been a traveling fool. It's been wonderful. Italy (twice), Amsterdam, California (twice), North Carolina, Portland. All in one year. Like God was making up for all the years I spent at home in one fell swoop. All this travel has put me in contact with more people in one year than the last twenty, combined. One thing that I kept noticing is how finding joy is possible anywhere.
When we were traveling to Portland, my husband and I had a long layover in Detroit. On the way to the gate for our next flight, I stopped to pick up a bottle of water. There were six people in line in front of me. It took nearly a half hour to check out even though there were three people behind the counter. As we waited the shop grew more and more crowded, but the man working the cash register remained calm and smiling. He'd tell each new customer that the computer system is down, sorry for your wait, add up the expenses, make change, and send them off smiling. It was beautiful. He was the perfect person for the job.
On the last leg home from Amsterdam Delta was having a 'luggage problem.' There was not enough room on the plane for the carryon luggage allowed. The gate agent was asking people to check their luggage, counting how many peices each passenger was carrying, and checking in a huge line of people, all on her own. She just took it in stride, smiling the whole time. She made everyone feel easy and comfortable, even while they were being badgered to give up something they'd paid a lot of money for. She had no need to blame it on the company or apologize. She was the perfect person for the job.
I think this is what makes change so hard. We take our world, shape it into something where we are the perfect person for the job, then the world changes on us. We lose that job, the kids go off to school, an new child is born, the job moves to a different state. It doesn't even need to be a bad change for the new way of living to take away our joy. The key is realize that it is within each of us to find joy in whatever situation.
But how, darn it?
When I think about the people I've seen this year and of my own times of joy, I notice three things in common. Competence, relaxation, and focus. Both of the people I described knew their jobs and did them well in trying circumstances. Competent. When my kids both left for college, I needed to learn how to organize my own life. I felt like I was drifting. It was so uncomfortable. School hours had always broken my day into neat bits that I filled in with work. I was lost deciding how to order my days. Four years later, I have a system that works most of the time. It gave be back lines to color inside. Thank God.
The relaxation I'm thinking of is not meditation or stretching. It can almost be described as allowing. The idea 'what I can't control, I won't worry about.' It was amazing to watch these two people rise to the challenge with no complaints, no worries, no energy spent on what they could not control. In direct contrast to their shining examples, I am a master worrier. It's a talent. One that I use in the small hours of every night. It drives me crazy, but I do have a work around. Each night before I go to bed, I write down a list of everything I could wake up and try to solve in the middle of the night. If I wake up and start thinking, I just remind myself that that is already on the list and go back to sleep. It only took three nights for my brain to start believing and now it works like a charm.
The last commonality I noticed was focus. My two teachers in the airports were completely present, not worrying about the future or fretting about past mistakes. They didn't even blame the employers who got them into the uncomfortable situations, they just worked to resolve the problems before them. It was beautiful. Meditation in action. I find this place most easily when I'm doing reiki, working in the garden, writing fiction, or sewing. The key is to take that feeling of ease and find ways to put it in the other areas of life. Sometimes I clean house the way I garden, just setting out to work for a while and letting it take me where it will rather than to finish a specific task. Other times I clean the way I sew, noticing how each little bit of clean area adds to the beauty of the whole room.
Joy is not happiness. Joy is not pleasure. But what, exactly, is it? I had the hardest time defining joy, though I experience it all the time. I poked and I prodded. Nothing. Finally I went to Uncle Google for help. Here is my favorite definition so far. According to John Piper in his article How Do You Define Joy?, "Joy is a good feeling of the soul, produced by the Holy Spirit, as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world." To secularize this definition, joy is a good feeling of the soul from seeing the beauty in the world. Lets all go out, find some beauty and become the perfect person for whatever job you have today.
