Twelve years ago today, I began to learn about Joy.
To be sure, I’d had glimpses before: in my children’s laughter. In the
flash of color before the sun goes down. In the single, sweet notes of a violin.
But those were gifts of joy, not Joy itself. That came in a very different way.
It started with grief.
It started with the kind of grief that slices every cell in half. “We spoke just 3 days ago”, you tell yourself. “We laughed together just last month”. And then you quit counting because it just reminds you that time is taking you further and further away from that last moment of togetherness.
It started with the kind of grief that slices every cell in half. “We spoke just 3 days ago”, you tell yourself. “We laughed together just last month”. And then you quit counting because it just reminds you that time is taking you further and further away from that last moment of togetherness.
For a while, life wears a grey hood and you become OK with that.
But time doesn’t let the universe dress in grief forever. One day you dance at your son’s
wedding. You travel with good friends. You sit on your back porch and watch the
moon and sip a glass of wine, and one night it dawns on you that all is well.
That, unconstrained by human events, it always was well.
You examine the path stretched out behind and on examination find each
silken thread is spun of stronger things than life itself. You look ahead and there
is Joy, weaving the quiet undergirding of tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrows.
Eternally real, though often out of sight.
“Humankind cannot bear very much
reality,” said T.S. Eliot.
So I content myself with knowing that I'm only just learning about Joy.
And that is quite enough.
