Redtree Times

Breaking Joy–At Principle Gallery

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, something which gives me the greatest joy.

It can seem so simple. Yet I see people who seem joyless and I wonder where the joy might be in their life.

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.

The above was posted here back in 2009. Some things have changed. It’s not a sunny morning for one thing. And our good girl, Jemma, our rescue Corgi, passed away years ago so the joy of her resting against my chest is no more. But there is still joy in the contented purrs of our cats, especially the feral family that currently occupies my garage. There is something so satisfyingly joyful in having a near-wild creature choose to let you love them. To trust you.

The mother cat disappeared for several days last week. We feared she was dead. I was heartbroken since she had transformed from what was originally a snarling, swatting wildcat into a creature that openly showed her affection for me with loud grinding purrs and soulful, contented gazes up at me as I petted her.

Thankfully, she returned a few days ago and we were joyful. But she was obviously injured and kept her distance. We believe she had an encounter with a raccoon in the garage.

But in the last day or so, she has progressed and returned to the garage which I seal up at night so that no other creatures can enter. She is on the mend, moving much better, and has allowed me to once again stroke her.

She is back once more with her purrs and stares. It’s a small thing but it makes me happy.

Gives me joy.

And maybe that is the sort of victory that Gandhi described at the top, the kind that remains after persevering and enduring all the hardships this world sometimes bestows upon us.

Maybe hard-earned joy is the ultimate victory.