Joy is a Choice

Recently, some children said to me "You're always happy" and this got me thinking.....

During the past 4 years of my life I have lost 7 loved ones, not acquaintances, but those who I held close to my heart. In what can only be described as a shock of seismic proportion, a huge part of the loving, emotional landscape of my life disappeared.

I didn't know my heart could withstand so much loss and still survive. Even more surprising to me was that while I was experiencing the tremendous grief of losing one loved one after another, deep inside, behind the heartbreak, I could still sense the Joy (albeit faint) that I have come to know as my essential nature.

Don't get me wrong, I have cried more tears than I knew I had. When driving I would often have to pull my car over to the side of the road because I couldn't see clearly for all the tears in my eyes. Sometimes the pain was so intense, it was all I could do to breathe into the next moment. Still, there was never a doubt that the part of me I nourish, cherish, support and protect was intact and the only thing greater than the profound grief I was experiencing was the profound sense of certainty that the love, joy and strength within me was greater than the pain. Knowing this, I could surrender to the grief allowing myself to feel it, know it and be with it until it shifted, something essential to the healing process.

How did I have this within me? I developed it.  It has been an unwavering choice, followed by behaviour I have aligned with this choice, practiced everyday.

I choose Joy. I could have chosen anything: despair, bitterness, anger, powerlessness etc. and in aligning my behaviors with any of these, my life would be a reflection of those choices. However, I decided to choose Joy and to see and experience it in all its forms even when the people and events around me seem to indicate the opposite. This is my right as a human being and it is yours, too.

This is also an incredibly powerful place from which to live because you will not be solely dependent upon things outside of yourself to make you feel good, happy, safe or joyous.

Stay tuned for the continuation of this thought in my next blog. Thanks for visiting!