Standing Up for YOUR Joy
I’m not a fan of the cat. But I sure can appreciate that face!
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” (from the book, 100 Years of Lenni and Margot)
I loved that quote so much, I added it to the reminders on my phone. I see it every day, and it reminds me that joy trumps all.
Danielle LaPorte wrote, “JOY BECOMES YOUR NORTH STAR. Life can be grueling. The planet is suffocating, humans can be so cruel, there are unmet longings that we all carry. But if you can get to Joy just once today, and then once again tomorrow and the next day…you will start to create grooves to your Soul — a map to Joy. You’ll remember your way back to your natural state when you slip out of it — which you will. And you’ll do whatever it takes to stay in Joy as long as you can — even if you have to fight for it.”
Her Credo for Making It Happen video on YouTube is a must watch. Nothing’s perfection. Everything anyone has ever done could’ve been done better.
“They” say that joy is a muscle,, and like any muscle, it gets easier to work with, the more you use and stretch it. For me, I get joy from writing. It’s never anywhere near perfect. I usually can’t stand to re-read what I’ve written once I hit the Publish button. Any writer will tell you that writing is a struggle. We will do anything to avoid it. But when we do, morning can pass into night, and sometimes the next morning! That’s JOY.
I have found this recently in doing Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. First thing (I don’t always do this first) in the day, you hand-write three pages. Handwritten is the key. I’ve done journaling or Daily Impulse Writing on the computer using the keyboard (of course) for years. When I look back on them, they’re mostly a venting about noise or rudeness that day. But morning pages? I’m a late adopter to a lot of things, but I think she’s onto something (she was actually onto this about four decades ago). I have ideas about things, characters, scenes, sentences throughout the day. When I vacuum, or take out the trash. Insignificant, small, of course, or so it seems.
At first, it started as venting, and why am I doing this, it’s so stupid, i have nothing to say, but after a month, I noticed a shift. It’s about visions or dreams or stories or a person in a story. It’s what I hoped for but really didn’t trust would happen.
Now, I do it every day. I haven’t missed a day in almost two months. I know that when I fill up this spiral notebook, I’ll just throw it away. It’s not meant for anything but the joy.
A mindset change and a couple of quotes:
The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. ~Socrates
“When people ask me if it has been a hard or easy road, I always answer with the same quotation, the end is nothing, the road is all.” ~Willa Cather
Is there anything you don’t do, because it’s just for that day’s joy? This might just be THAT star, your North Star.