It was windy and the park near their house was an invitation
to play. We brought out their new kite; while my friend held the controls I
stood with it at a distance, took a short run and it was in the air, climbing
high through the gusty layers of wind.
I was entranced as a kid, laughing as I watched it
fluttering and bobbing. It was so high in the air that it seemed absurd to think
someone was controlling it, yet my friend kept nonchalantly tugging at the
strings and smiling. The kite was a free spirit and its freedom was infectious
– I briefly took hold of the steering, still laughing with sheer delight at the
audacity and beauty of its flight. It was the first time I had flown a kite and
the memory has been etched deep since.
Joy is the unfettered exuberance of life. It is life with a
clear path to express itself, direct and powerful, healing and productive. It
is an elemental shout of “yes!” to all creation.
Most often and most clearly we see joy in children: a
toddler has just walked for the first time and beams with achievement, or a
child jumps onto a playground swing and is immediately overtaken by joyful
energy. Joy and play are connected, both requiring an uncluttered and
unpolluted innocence to flourish. And both joy and play thrive on discovery,
the arrival at a moment that is entirely unique and fresh in time.
Joy is boundless energy: we can face almost anything, no
challenge is insurmountable. It also engenders a certain lightness of being
that’s crucial in facing life’s ups and downs, and which is a necessary balance
to the gravity of life.
Adult lives with adult cares often seem sapped of joy,
confounded by cynicism, complicated by doubt, inhibited by unhelpful
psychological patterns. When the path to joy is blocked we can seek it in the
wrong places, displacing its life affirmation in drugs, alcohol or other
addictions. Joy is also necessary for social stability; some amount of it needs
to be stimulated or maintained for a harmonious society – witness the
popularity of television, comedy and comedians, and spectator sport, all of
which can elicit feelings akin to joy.
There is also a kind of joy that is less transitory, less
dependent on what is happening in each moment. In this regard I recall the work
of the late Western Zen master Charlotte Joko Beck, but it’s also described in
the wisdom traditions of many different cultures. For Beck, joy is a permanent
condition of life that can be experienced in happy times and in hardship: it
infuses life’s phenomena, but its origin is in mystery beyond. “Joy is being
willing for things to be as they are,” she says in her book, Nothing Special: Living Zen. When we
experience life fully but without attachment we connect with joy, a boundless
energy that is the ground of being, the source from which ever-changing
material forms spring. It is eternal and indestructible, a continuously
renewing well of replenishment, affirmation and inspiration.
Perhaps ultimately, joy is simply life contemplating itself. It is the act of awareness, great or small, that propels
the evolutionary process, and without which nothing can exist. It is the fox
that catches and devours a rabbit, and the man flying a kite in a field; it is
the green algae multiplying in a creek and the pod of dolphins swimming in the
ocean; it is the old woman waiting at a bus stop and the Prime Minister
speaking in parliament. All are encompassed by joy, and the more awareness we
bring to each act, each moment of our lives, the more we increase joy in the
world. As joy increases, so all life is boosted and made more robust. Joy is simple,
with a simplicity that is at the same time incredibly profound.
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