Joy is not an extra

Do you find joy in the daily processes of your regular boring life?

Yes?

Good.

No?

Why not?

Joy in the process isn’t an extra or a bonus or a maybe. It’s a basic requirement.

I’m serious. You should be, too. Joy is no laughing matter, my friend! Joy is essential. Joy is breath. Joy is energy. Joy is your birthright.

If you have no joy in a process that’s happening with any regularity in your life, why would you allow it to keep happening? Why would you say yes to that? Why, in a world of endless options, would you stick with anything that is not full of joy?

I know why.

The whisper of fear. The need for survival. I understand. We all want to think Level 2 is real, but how do we get there? It seems impossible. We have to live. We have to pay bills. We have to feed ourselves and raise our children. We have to build our houses and wear better clothes and look the right way so we can get the right job so we can make the more money so we can buy the more food so we can build the more house so we can wear the more better clothes so we can raise and mold our more better children except that all of us are longing for something that is not more,

but less.

And all of the striving and doing and circling and playing and looping and soul-crushing we do is not better. Not at all.

If we need more of anything, it is more time, more freedom, more connection, more sleep, more breathing, more sitting and staring at the ocean or the sky, more smiling, more letting go, more more more more more more more more of what is already in us, what comes from us, and what is always available to us. Anytime. All of these things are part of the ecosystem, not the ego system. (Man I love that so much. So much.)

I understand that change is difficult and scary. Oh, do I.

But I am telling you, there is something being uncovered. There is something being realized. There is something deep and aware in all of us, and in some of us, it is coming to the surface again.

Joy is making pathways to the surface. Joy is striking the chains off our hands and feet. Joy is waking up. Joy is asking why. Joy is with us. Joy is in us. Joy is part of us. Joy is the answer to the only question that matters.  Joy is not an ethereal abstract unreachable ideal. Joy is everyday.

Joy is the pathway.

H/T Patrick Rhone and Austin Kleon. Thank you.