What do you hope for?
Dream of?
Wish or want or desire?
The usual?
Success. Financial freedom. To lose the extra weight, find the perfect mate, land the job of your dreams?
Maybe you’re hoping for just a smidgen, or more, of happiness?
Maybe just a life of joy?
Not for nothing is joy considered elusive. Seems like it’s the one thing we’re all looking for in all the wrong places.
But there is a way to joy. A way to finally get at it, finally find it, finally grab it and (miraculously) hold on to it and not let go.
There’s a secret to joy, you might say, but it’s not really all that secret.
And it’s not really what you think. It doesn’t involve gratitude journals or twenty minutes of daily meditation or checking off items on your to-do list or even on your ten year, five year, or one year plan.
It doesn’t involve landing the job or closing on the house or filling your closet with designer anything.
Astoundingly, joy doesn’t come from any of the things that you achieve at all.
Joy doesn’t even require that you succeed at anything.
It only asks that you get out into the world and get doing.
“The soul’s joy lies in doing.”
So said Shelley and you know, he was right. Wise words from a 19th century romantic poet whose journey on this earth ended before he was even thirty years old . Sometimes in our 21st century conceit we can get to thinking that because we’ve got smartphones and smart speakers and smart everythings that we’re so much smarter, but wisdom doesn’t come from technology and you know? There’s no app for joy.
Wisdom is always found in words. And the wisest words ring true throughout the ages no matter what age they were written in.
There is only one way to joy, and the soul knows it.
The path must be walked, the work must be done, the joy lies in the doing.
Gandhi said that “Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.”
In the fight.
In the attempt.
Yeah, and even in the suffering involved, but no, not in the victory itself. Never in the success of it all, only in the doing of it all. In the showing up. In the trying.
“Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.” (~Mahatma Gandhi)
We can come up with a million reasons, a million excuses, a million explanations for why we can’t be a writer even though what we really want is to write; why we can’t get fit even though what we really want is to be fitter; why we can’t enroll in that class even though what we really want is to enroll in it.
But excuses are really just fear and insecurity wearing fancy clothes, and they don’t really have to be invited to the party.
It’s a secret, but it’s not really a secret at all.
It’s the hardest simplest thing of all, as most wisdom really is.
Joy is in the doing.
So the question remains – what do you hope for?
Dream of?
Wish or want or desire?
The usual? Success. Financial freedom. A perfect weight, perfect mate, perfect job?
Maybe just a life of joy?
Then go do.
~xo,
LuAnne
