How Much Joy Can One Day Hold?
The question was poised to me recently, “How much joy can one day hold?” That question has stuck with me a couple days now.
I tend to align with the school of thought that dichotomies of the soul grow from the same seed. Hope and despair, love and hate, assurance and fear, joy and sorrow… they all stem from the souls center. I believe they are fluid; momentary states of being and often, they exist simultaneously, interdependent of the other.
Call me odd, but this idea comforts me. It means for instance, that when I am afraid my soul also has a capacity for hope. It means that even my most fearful of moments have purpose and although they may feel negative those feeling in reality, are nothing more than a distorted hope, a backwards love.
When I step back and embrace my feelings in this manner what seemed like negative feelings that I worked hard to keep at bay become potentially positive feelings that I need and want to embrace. As I meet pain, fear, or sadness I know its here because I’ve loved, cared, and invested and knowing that allows me to re-shift my framework from which I must sort through feelings.
A friend recently shared about the power of naming things, specifically the things that possess and overpower us. When you give something a name, make it known; you can begin the terrifying process of dismissing the control it has in your life.
Lately, I’ve been improving at welcoming those difficult feelings - pain, fear, and loss… I allow them to come in and I get to know them, give them names. I try to sit with them, invest in them, and learn why and from where they’ve come. Somehow in and through that intimate process they transform from something negative and unknown into something recognizable - something I can own and change.
Ironically I’ve found that after I do all that and am about to usher them out the door what once where perceived as enemies have become comrades. I’ve made peace with them and they’ve are no longer my pain, but my joy and hope.
And so I refer back to the question at hand, “How much joy can one day hold?”
Through the continual journey of embracing my fears I have discovered that my days can have endless joy… because even on my worst days, if given due process, I find my sadness and fears actually have a profound joy and hope buried within.
And for me friends, that is the good news that delivers me to Love time and again to supply me with endless joy each day.
May you all find the same.
Bobbie
I tend to align with the school of thought that dichotomies of the soul grow from the same seed. Hope and despair, love and hate, assurance and fear, joy and sorrow… they all stem from the souls center. I believe they are fluid; momentary states of being and often, they exist simultaneously, interdependent of the other.
Call me odd, but this idea comforts me. It means for instance, that when I am afraid my soul also has a capacity for hope. It means that even my most fearful of moments have purpose and although they may feel negative those feeling in reality, are nothing more than a distorted hope, a backwards love.
When I step back and embrace my feelings in this manner what seemed like negative feelings that I worked hard to keep at bay become potentially positive feelings that I need and want to embrace. As I meet pain, fear, or sadness I know its here because I’ve loved, cared, and invested and knowing that allows me to re-shift my framework from which I must sort through feelings.
A friend recently shared about the power of naming things, specifically the things that possess and overpower us. When you give something a name, make it known; you can begin the terrifying process of dismissing the control it has in your life.
Lately, I’ve been improving at welcoming those difficult feelings - pain, fear, and loss… I allow them to come in and I get to know them, give them names. I try to sit with them, invest in them, and learn why and from where they’ve come. Somehow in and through that intimate process they transform from something negative and unknown into something recognizable - something I can own and change.
Ironically I’ve found that after I do all that and am about to usher them out the door what once where perceived as enemies have become comrades. I’ve made peace with them and they’ve are no longer my pain, but my joy and hope.
And so I refer back to the question at hand, “How much joy can one day hold?”
Through the continual journey of embracing my fears I have discovered that my days can have endless joy… because even on my worst days, if given due process, I find my sadness and fears actually have a profound joy and hope buried within.
And for me friends, that is the good news that delivers me to Love time and again to supply me with endless joy each day.
May you all find the same.
Bobbie