Joy

Not everyone is joyful; appreciate it when you find it

The three most important people in my life are women.

These women are very different from each other, but they share one characteristic: joy. It’s a rare and wonderful thing to be joyful at your core—in your soul—and my wife, Ali, and my daughters, Erin and Kristy, are innately and intensely joyful human beings. 

Erin’s joy is bubbly and infectious, as if she’s surrounded by the same kind of light that haloes are made of. To know her is to smile and feel good. Kristy’s joy is intense, overwhelming, and powerful; she’s an avalanche of good. She feels like a happy ending coming your way. Ali’s joy is deep and warm and caring; if you need love and strength in your life, she’s an inexhaustible reservoir. To know her is to know that everything is going to turn out well.

As it happens, I’m not a particularly joyful person. I don’t think I’m a grouch (well, maybe now and then), but I’m not especially joyful. Happiness for me comes in the form of satisfaction when I’ve done something well or behaved in a way that is honorable or ethical or helped others do so. 

For most of us, if we’re lucky in life, we have our moments of joy. They come and go, and we remember them with, well…joy. But for a lucky few, joy is built in. It’s a part of their basic construction. They can’t help but be joyful, and the world’s bad stuff can’t suppress their joy for more than a moment or two. Their emotional rubber bands snap them back to joy, no matter how far circumstances pull them away.

For us mere mortals, the consequence of knowing or living with such joy, is that our lives are better by a wide margin than they otherwise might have been. No effort. No searching. It just happens.

That makes me a very lucky guy, thrice blessed by the women who mean the most to me.

Recently, Ali and I were enjoying ourselves with friends down by the lake. There was a lot of laughing, as there always is with this happy bunch. At one point, we took a few moments to remember a good friend—a wonderful woman who had recently died, far too young. She was a special case of joy. It wasn’t clear to me that she was or was not one of those joyful people—her demeanor was always calm and easy, but I’m not sure it was joyful. Yet, through some mysterious mechanism that’s invisible to me, she was able to induce joy in those around her. I don’t understand it, but I loved that about her. I saw it in abundance at the celebration of her life. I saw even more of it when a couple dozen of her family and friends came together in a small gathering to say goodbye again, and to spread her ashes in a place she loved. She was irretrievably gone, yet somehow she brought joy to others. Still does.

Here’s a question for you: Do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. was joyful? You wouldn’t think so because he looked somber and serious pretty much all the time, at least in public. Yet, for some reason, I’m convinced that joy lived in him, animated him, motivated him. After all, what could be more joyful than bringing freedom and equality to a people long suppressed? His people haven’t yet reached their fully experienced freedom—that won’t happen until the rest of us think of them not as “them” but as “we”—but they’re far along the path, and their goal is in sight. I think MLK could envision and internally experience the joy to come, and that’s why he dedicated himself to it, even to the point of risking, and ultimately losing, his life in its pursuit. Is that macabre? I don’t think so. Just the opposite; it’s inspiring.

I had a good friend at college, Al H. When I think of joy, Al’s image always comes to mind. He, like my Erin, had that bubbly kind of joy, and that same halo-like light seemed to enfold him wherever he went. We were on the swimming team together, both divers. At practice one day, attempting some kind of complicated back dive, his feet slipped, and he fell, smashing his jaw into the diving board, and collapsing into the pool. In an instant, he popped out of the water, blood flowing from his mouth. Al had bitten halfway through his tongue (yeah, gruesome), but he got back on the board, bleeding, yet with a huge smile. He set up to do the dive again, and did it without hesitation. It wasn’t perfect, but…jeez, cut him some slack. Then we shuffled him off to the hospital, still smiling, to get his mangled mouth fixed. 

What was joyful about that? Al was all about challenge. He would take on anything, any time, always with his trademark high-beam smile. Later he told me that he didn’t really feel much pain, but he knew he could do that dive. Absolutely knew it. He reveled in the challenge of it, despite the inconvenience of his injury. So, he did the dive, his smile got bigger, and the rest of us loved him for it.

Al died in Viet Nam at the age of twenty-six. But to this day, more than fifty years later, remembering him brings joy to my heart.

True joy seems to be a scarce commodity, like talent. Some of us are blessed with it in abundance, some seem to be “carriers” who pass it on to others in some mysterious way, while people like me, not so lucky, are able to witness it, but not “be” it. 

Even though I’m not one of those joyful-to-the-soul people, I don’t feel a lack of joy in my life. I can see and appreciate it in others. I can support it, and encourage it. I can feel grateful for it.

I admire joyful people…and I deeply love three of them.