Redtree Times

Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.

          — Mahatma Gandhi  

How do you define joy?  Is there such a thing as joy that is the same for every person or is finding joy strictly a personal preference?  Are there people who live without any joy at all in their lives or are there moments in everyone’s lives where they experience something close to joy?  Maybe it’s not a giddy kind of joy.  Maybe joy for some is a feeling of contentment, an absence of fear, an absence of pain.  

Maybe that’s it.  Maybe joy is finding that which takes away our fears and pains.

I don’t know.  I know that it doesn’t have to be sought.  It’s just there or it’s not.  For me, it might be as simple as laying in the grass and having my dog come over and lay against my chest.  It might be in sipping a cup of tea or watching the deer graze laconically in the yard.  It might be  in laughing out loud at something I’ve seen a hundred times yet still find funny or in making my wife laugh.  It can seem so simple yet I see people who seem joyless and I wonder where their joy might be.

Certainly, they must have something which brings them something akin to joy.  At least contentment.  But maybe it’s not for me to see or maybe they live a joyless existence.  Who knows?  Just something I wonder about on a sunny morning when the sun filtering through the trees, scattering patches of light on the thick grass beneath them, brings me joy.

By the way, the painting above is a new one, The Coming Together, that is part of the Principle Gallery show in June.  It features the entwined trees I sometimes use as well as the field rows.  I really like the feel of this piece and love the texture and color in the surface.  

Makes me happy.

Gives me joy…