Let’s continue our careful, sophisticated look at joys and pleasures, since, well, we do want more of them! Life presents us with enough difficulties. Let’s cherish the joys and pleasures that life also affords.
Moments of joy, suddenly here and suddenly gone, are not just passing moments. They are momentous. So, we covet them, we prize them and we angle for them. And, if we rarely or never experience them, we step to the side and try to figure out why.
In kirism, we have available to us that step to the side, that step that we take to provide ourselves with time and space to practice awareness. How many more joys and pleasures might we experience if we stepped to the side and took careful stock?
Say that you’ve been living one of your life purposes, for instance writing your novel. You stop to make yourself a cup of tea. As the water boils, you might worry that what you just wrote was terrible; or you could feel joy at having honorably worked.
Imagine! There you are standing in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil, and instead of beating yourself up about your last few paragraphs or shaking your fist at the publishing gods, you allow yourself a moment of joy at having written!
You just got a precious moment of joy by allowing for it and by angling for it. If you rarely allow for joy, what exactly is going to feel joyous? Will that delicious soup, if your mind is completely elsewhere? Will your child’s sudden smile, if you are always in the other room?
Yes, more pleasures, please. More joy, please. More happiness, please. But we can’t just pluck these out of thin air. How can we pluck joy out of a joyless marriage? So, we treat these as we treat meaning: in terms of opportunities and investments.
You find yourself in a joyless marriage. Well, maybe you should just leave it. But perhaps you have your reasons for staying. If so, then you’re obliged to invest in it. What might the two of you enjoy? Make as long a list as you can make and study it.
Far down the list might be a weekend away. Even further down might be walking side-by-side holding hands. But, as you sit with your list, you can feel those two rising. A weekend away, walking side-by-side, holding hands. Worth the investment?
You propose it. Your partner is surprised, skeptical, and pleased all at once. Already you are feeling the slightest tingle of joy. No, the universe has not magically shifted on its axis. But suddenly a bit more joy exists than existed the second before.
You can’t count on the weekend working. It is merely an opportunity. Are you confident? Maybe not. Has anything changed? Maybe not. But are you standing open to some pleasure, some joy, some happiness? Yes, you are.
Maybe nothing joyful will happen. But maybe something will. And then? Well, you repeat it. You take weekends away as ongoing opportunities for joy. You invest in them. Maybe you can’t count on them but you can look forward to them!
In this way, you create instants of joy that would never have materialized had you not applied some basic, sensible kirist principles.
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Eric Maisel is the author of 50+ books. You can learn more about him at www.ericmaisel.com, subscribe to all of his blog posts at https://authory.com/ericmaisel, learn more about kirism here, and write him at [email protected]
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