Courageous Joy
Isn’t it strange that it seems as if all we really want is to be happy, while at the same time we habitually sabotage that happiness. We’re so often stretching, reaching for it somewhere “out there” in the future, aren’t we? When we get our act together. When we accomplish this or that; some mile marker or finish line. (As if there is a finish line where we finally live “happily ever after”. No more challenges. No more evolution, expansion or transformation.) We insist on all the reasons we’re not allowed to be happy. We don’t believe we deserve it, or to flip that around a bit–we fully believe we don’t deserve it for a hundred different reasons. Not yet, anyway. We’re too much of this or too little of that. We haven’t earned the right. We find ourselves in a battle to prove ourselves to an outside world, after which maybe, just maybe we’ll finally get that magic permission slip from someone out there to rest and allow some joy into our lives.
We long to feel we belong to each other, to ourselves and to a greater purpose. We want to know we’re somehow safe in a turbulent world. Yet we have trouble accepting ourselves. Instead, we end up becoming our own worst tormentors. We have trouble giving ourselves safe sanctuary in the private intimacy of our own hearts. The joke is on us because an abiding sense of safety is never going to come from anywhere else.
Being happy has never been a right we need to earn in the first place. It’s an inalienable birthright. A gift that comes with being alive, if only we’ll receive it. The only permission slip we’re ever going to get comes from a deep knowing of ourselves and our natural connection to Life Itself.
We forget that all those judgments we feel and are so afraid of are actually coming from inside ourselves. I did that, anyway, for a really long time, and I still catch myself doing it. It’s been different things along the way: When I get a driver license. When I lose weight. When I can call myself a strong, powerful woman and believe it. When I’m making more money. When I’m always in a creative flow. When things are easier. When my life looks more like the pictures of it in my head.
The other day I shared some of my writing with my spiritual group in a post. Almost immediately afterward, I found myself conjuring up fear that I was coming from a place of guile and deception, wanting something from them rather than innocently wanting to share with them. Arrogance instead of generosity. Self-concern instead of selflessness. Oh my God, I thought, What if they see through me? So I ‘fessed up. By telling them my truth of the moment and listening to what they had to say, I began to see that I can never, ever win when I’m twisting myself into all these weird little knots. I will turn whatever I am doing into something wrong, because that’s my vantage point–scouting for wrongness. The lesson here has to do with learning to trust myself, to trust God, and to trust the moment. To stop second-guessing. To do what I do and then…just let it land where it will. Whatever comes next will ultimately be learning. Guidance. It will be what’s relevant to that moment. I don’t have to sweat it and I don’t have to protect myself. Life is not “out to get me”. All I need to do is stop playing these crazy-making games.
Life isn’t “out to get” you either. It’s on your side. It’s for you.
Everything isn’t always as we prefer it. I know it gets hard for all of us at some point. Sometimes unspeakably hard. But I always think that Something knows much better than I do. I certainly don’t want the job of running the world. At the same time, I also feel I have a hand in creating my own life. I get to choose. Love or Fear? Faith or Despair? Create or stagnate? Step out…or hide?
“We must risk delight,” the poet Jack Gilbert says, “We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the courage to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”
May you love yourself enough to be courageous. May we nurture ourselves and one another in these often confusing times.
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