It's funny how things seem easier when you're feeling jolly. Work is less so. People smile at you. You say all the right things without hesitation. You feel capable of anything... But then you start to wonder, "How long will this last? This must continue! I like this feeling!" and you start focusing on being happy. You start focusing so hard on the feeling of happiness, clinging on to it so tightly, that you squash it like a kid with a hamster. Your interactions become calculated and forced; you stumble over yourself; and as a result you clam up, thinking nobody wants to listen to you anyway, stupid... This is the how the cycle goes (at least for me it does).
Happiness, as I mentioned before, is a feeling. And feelings are fickle - never dependable, and oftentimes they change before your very eyes. Feelings are much like cafeteria food in this regard.
On the other hand, joy is a state of being. Joy is a way of life. Joy is the satisfaction - the certainty - of a life headed in the right direction. I think I'm finally beginning to realize that. Because joy doesn't require a constant cycle of happiness or on-top-of-things-ness, but rather a constant cycle of growth - which necessitates death in a small degree. In fact, I wonder if a life of happiness is a life lived in delusion. Denial...
This came to me yesterday when, perched on the top of a small mountain, I couldn't see a single other sign of human life. I tried to put my finger on what I was feeling at the time. It wasn't happiness and it wasn't entirely humility. It was a kind of sublime satisfaction that I could only describe as joy. I looked around me, wondering where God happened to be in all of this. Promptly, and as if to say, "Right here, you dunce!", a gust of wind almost knocked me off the cliff.
It was then that I really realized that joy isn't something that is attained through a series of prescribed steps or methods. It isn't something that can be found in all of the self-help books in the world. Instead, it is something that we each have to find on our own - simply by living like we were meant to. Certainly I can't claim to have any kind of understanding of how my life will be played out, but each day I take a step or two forward (and frequently a step or two back) towards understanding why things do happen; what it is that I can make out of this life that I've been blessed with; and who is the person that I was meant to be. It's the ebbing and flowing pattern of growth that I'm beginning to recognize.
All I can say is that I have a long way to go before I become who I think I am; and when and if I do get there, I will no doubt realize that I was previously mistaken, and will keep moving along in my life and in my faith until at last I meet up with God and figure out exactly what the heck I was so confused about...
Until then, I keep hiking.
Good news! My album is now available!
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