So You Want to be Happy?

An examination of joy.

So you want to be happy? Then let that snowflake melt on your tongue. Let the ladybug crawl down your arm.

You want to be happy? Buy the thing. Watch the clip. Fall in love with a puppy. Go on the first dates and tell the stories. Pretend you don’t meltdown, and leave when things get complicated.

Oh, but if it’s joy you seek…

That is something sustained, reliable, and content despite the rhythm of life. If that’s what you seek, we must dig deeper.

For joy, you must remain present. You must let the snowflake melt on your tongue while the frigid air whips at your cheeks. You must let that ladybug crawl on your skin, while the sweat streams down your back and into your pants. For joy, you must fall in love with that puppy, knowing your heart will break, little by little as his snout whitens, until eventually your heart shatters, and you wonder if you could ever love that big again.

Joy is so much more expensive than happiness, but the return on the investment- Oh the return!

What you’ll pay is your attention, your time, your effort, and your commitment, but what you’ll receive is your resilience, your fortitude, your expansion, your surprisingly soft human self.

For joy, you must meet yourself with so much compassion that you hardly recognize that voice inside that used to hurt you. You’ll meet a version of you when pursuing joy, that will companion you for the rest of your life.

Happiness is the sample. Joy is the feast.

For joy, you must serve, in some capacity the call on your life.

Heal a heart

Hold a hand

Tell a joke

Build a community

Need, and be loved by someone

For joy, you must strum the cord that connects you to the Divine. Joy the song, your soul opening, the melody.

If you want to feel happy, open your whole heart, as wide as you can, and then even a little wider still. Swallow up the whole world in your life, and then you’ll see, it was joy all along. Clawing its way into you. And by that time, by God, by that time, happiness will be as sweetly temporary as the snowflake on the bedrock of your joy.