Maybe I'm all talked out.
Maybe I am needing to mirror autumn, and just let my leaves fall and my branches go bare for a season.
Maybe it's just too hard to write about joy when I read about so much that is joyless -- worse than joyless, actually. Heartbreaking.
Whatever the cause, I have finally admitted to myself just how unmotivated I have been to write this blog during these last few months of finishing my book and doing what needs to be done to birth it out into the world..
So I've been checking in: Have I lost my joy? Have I failed my daily practice?
No.
Every day I practice joy. I just haven't been sharing it as much. And yet I have long believed that to share joy is essential to the healing of the planet. When we lose our joy, we lose our connection to one another, to other species, to the environment, and certainly to the Divine. Without joy, we become apathetic, hopeless, depressed.
So, I've been asking myself how I can revitalize the sharing of my joy practice. And the best I can come up with right now is this: Keep It Simple.
Simple, for me, means fewer words.
So in an effort to kickstart my joy sharing, I am going to do less rather than more. It's something my dad taught me at the end of his life. One day, when he and I were sitting on his bed working on our book about art, he asked me to name every artist I could think of, and he would have to describe them in two words. Picasso, Michelangelo, Raphael. Two words for artists who changed the world with their creativity. How do you do that? He did -- and each time it was both pithy and revelatory. He showed me that, when we need to, we can understand huge ideas with very few words. As someone who is terminally loquacious, recognizing this has been a gift.
That's why I'm going to try something I did this time last year: I looked through my photos and asked them what they need me to hear. Since I could only fit a few words on the photo, I had to distill what I felt when I took the photo into its essence.
Here were some of last year's offerings:
So, as 2017 winds down, I will keep listening and sharing what I hear as simply as possible. I think we all need to do this from time to time -- remember that it is not up to us to will our way through the world, but rather let the Universe tell us what it needs us to hear and share. And that is almost always simple. . .
This is what I heard this morning:
I will follow. I will not let go of the thread of my joy. I will remember joy is simple -- so sharing it is simple too. As Albert Einstein knew, "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. . ."
May we all remember the simple joys of being alive and connected to one another.
PS If this resonates for you, please feel free share your own photos with words by emailing me HERE