Little Foxes

Stolen Joy

This is a story about joy, and about thieves.

I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on what I’m teaching people through my presence, particularly what I’m teaching my teens.

Am I teaching them that life is meant to be relished and delighted in? Or, more often, am I teaching them what it looks like to let my joy for the day be stolen away by some wily and all too convincing distractions?

This past week, my daily meditation was a consideration of joy. I am referring to living in a way that reveals what Gregory Boyle refers to as “Knowing that we have access to the source of love [that] brings us true joy. A limitless reservoir. So, we settle into this loving luminosity that allows us to accept everything and abide and rest in it without attachment and struggle. We can relish then…every…single…thing.”

It’s a principle tenet this abiding, resting, without attachment and struggle, of the all the best traditions. Yet, how much more often do I hyper focus on, try to control and manipulate, the many details that so soon don’t matter? I start my day so still and quiet, settled and aligned. Then I move from quiet meditation into what I perceive as the demands of the day—there is schoolwork for my children, a to-do list for jobs, household chores, sports to drive my children to, behavior to correct, phone time to police, groceries and dinner and…if I let any balls fall, if I don’t get to the whole list, if my children don’t produce the results I imagine, then what? It ALL feels so pressing and important…yet is it really?