I’ve been searching for joy for a million thousand years.

Or maybe it just seems like that long.

Maybe it just seems like forever and maybe we’re just all searching for joy?

When it comes right down to it, those things we say we want in life (the usual suspects: money, fulfilling work that we enjoy, true love, freedom, passion) are really just the things we think will bring us joy.

Turns out it’s not really stuff we want to have or get or do, but the feeling we hope the having and getting and doing will fill us with.

We’re all just searching for joy.

So it might be a good idea to try to figure out just where joy lives.

Ask Google and you’ll get about 3 million results, more or less. Which is sort of ironic. It seems like a whole lot of folks know where joy comes from, but not a whole lot of us are finding it. More people are unhappy now and depression continues to plague us.

And yet, instead of throwing in the towel and just up and declaring that there is no way to be happy, we keep on trying.

Searching for joy like it’s hidden in the perfect job or the perfect partner or the perfect home.

You can search your whole life in the perfect-whatever and still never find joy because if it’s hidden at all the crazy truth is that it’s just hidden in plain sight.

But we have to choose it.

Choose to see it, hear it, taste it, touch it.

Choose to notice it. Again and again. In the breeze that cools us off, morning mist heavy with birdsong, laundry flapping on line, loaves fresh from oven, and even tears fresh from heart that leak out the sorrow to make more room for joy.

Choose to notice joy. Again and again and again.

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. (~Henry Nouwen)

Is this then a choice?

Can we simply choose to notice, choose to pay attention, choose joy?

I’m not one given to chanting a mantra or even putting inspirational notes on my bathroom mirror, but maybe this is something I could use a little reminding of?

That I can daily choose joy, choose to notice, choose to know. “Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” (~Marianne Williamson).

Joy need not come from the house I choose to buy or the clothes I choose to wear, but from the way I choose to see.

It’s not rocket science. To be honest, it’s not even all that hard.

A child could do it. In fact, most of them do.

Maybe this is what we all just need to do.

Maybe we all just need to stop searching for joy and start simply noticing it.

~xo,
LuAnne