Restorative Reminders
Creating Joy Amidst Bottled Emotions: Delights of the Ordinary No. 17
- Anugrah
A letter to you in the age of distilled AI laden dimension. I talk to you about deep things that are also simple enough.
“It’s not about getting it right, it’s just about getting it.”
In this age of supersonic gen-zeers; where genuine connections are digitized and handshakes mere icons; when children know how gazillion degrees of heat the sun has; when our attention-deficit-syndrome is fed impulsively with algorithm-controlled motivational quotes or snappy ten second K pop-dance videos, we need a lot of patience and grit to spend our precious ten minutes to read some unknown writer (like myself) talking in random far corner of the internet! Who am I to expect you to read through many words without much visual treat?
Yet, if you are still reading, then, Thank You!
I understand there may not be many like you, but then, I am not here to speak to everyone, instead, I would speak to you who still believe in unhurried moments and refuse to be occupied with prompt gratifications.
And that is why we talk, talk through these letters, that are meant to be waited upon, meant to be read and re-read. You would know that the world is largely messy and murky, especially when wars are waged too easily on the land and in the hearts, I still take to the internet wooing for hope and may want to pass it on too.
Hence, consider me your ordinary next-door friend who talks to you through these letters and perhaps takes some tiny-miny opportunities to navigate you through the gargantuan, non-linear-uber life we all live.
Well, the loveliest thing about life is that it cascades in waves, rising as well as falling in momentums, also retaining some for a while in places making them memorable. Still, then, the human heart remembers the glum moments more than the happy ones. So, allow this week to be that space where you let bottled emotions flow out. They are basically colliding around your head like a ping-pong ball and sedimenting into tight fists and jaws. You can’t build a great tomorrow with too much of yesterday buried in you. So we need to mourn. We need to heal. We need to let it go!
Life is not one generalized moment, it has incredible, living moments and numerous miniature seconds and nanoseconds in it going by. And the most toilsome and nerve-wracking part is to find joy in the places of discomfort. Especially when we have bottled a lot inside us.
The complexity Lies in our Heads. In the End Heart Desires Simplicity.
What have you felt? Joy or Happiness!
The fulfilment of life and its expressiveness enormously depends on joy than on happiness. When you uncovered that old sepia picture of you with your family what did you feel? Joy or happiness? When you dug your toes in the cool sea sand, what did you feel? Joy or happiness? When after many light-years you feasted on tea cake your mom baked, what did you feel? Joy or happiness?
It is that very simple. “It’s not about getting it right, it’s just about getting it.”
Our joy is set deep in our sinews and strands that we would only comprehend when it gladdens us with its cool sprinkles. Joy can be felt at various levels in different configurations. When you look at your ordinary everyday life be mindful of what you have inside you. Joy or happiness?
If you still have mere happiness then you may want to look for joy. And you will find it in re-living the happy moments you once lived or finding a life-changing trajectory. It can be merely finding order in your chaotic life, finding a job with a purpose, or sitting in silence – Joy is yours.
What is Joy?
Joy is the everlasting epitome of happiness.
Joy though is a feeling, it incorporates happiness in it. So a happy feeling may dwell on materialistic, worldly pleasure while joy is derived from soul-satisfying, emotional well-being. Especially, when things are restored.
Let’s run through it again -
When you uncovered that old framed sepia picture of you with your family what did you feel? Joy or happiness? When you dug your toes in the cool sea sand, what did you feel? Joy or happiness? When after many light-years you feasted on tea cake your mom baked, what did you feel? Joy or happiness?
A joy of the past is the joy of the present, as well as a joy of the future (a hope). When the moments are re-lived, and re-imagined, we have the capacity to participate in the same joy again. The birth of your child is also joy among many emotions, despite the labour you went through in raising them yet it stays the same even now when your child is a handsome man or woman. Your joy is complete in them.
Joy has a component, if not of morality, then at least of seriousness. It signifies happiness which is a serious business.
– British naturalist and environmental writer Michael McCarthy
Joy is a feeling that leaves an everlasting symphony inside your heart. Which will never wilt away. Circumstances may grow dim but these changes will not rob you of the Joy you know now. It is the evidence that you have built some extra hope inside your heart. You can be sad, but you may never forget the taste of joy. It runs deep.
The Tempest is necessary to find Joy.
Like a tempest is necessary to feel the stillness you too need tumult to understand Joy. And that is why we also require a reminder to let the bottled emotions flow out. The disruption happened, and the tempest came. Now let it go!
It is time for a different form of defence. Not just a sophisticated way of letting our emotions out, nor escaping towards the worldly notion of achieving mammoth success of financial value, but a third way where we should offer up our hurts and start shifting our thoughts towards the genuine things that matter to our spirits. This is a highly slow process- slower than a snail’s walk or a turtle’s stroll. It is massively sluggish. But it is also gradual!
In most simple cases a lot of life’s problems and emotional turmoil can be greatly helped with either a snack, a nap, a chat, a hug, a walk or a cup of tea. Our problems fundamentally need some tender care -whether our problems are existential or deeply structural and systemic. In more prolonged disruptions we might need professional help to get out of it.
The gift of joy is the gift nestled in the responsibility.
Hence I nudge you to get these held-up emotions out of you. With a nap or a chat. Or with a dance or a doodle. A walk in the nature or a professional help. Whatever is needed. So you may get a glimpse of tiny joys to start with.
Finding joy of eternal nature is a story of a person about which we can talk when we meet for a coffee.
Till then the small and big joys are vested even in small little things. Look for them once you let go of the tangles and aches and deposits of stresses within you – little by little. Joy in some ways is a meditative process.
Joy In Our Workplace
A CEO presentation gone great is a good place to be, yet when every day is the same fulfilling moment with or without the CEO is the birthing of joy. It is this place when an Excel sheet or a Word document or pushing towards the monthly targets will create a place of mindful purpose. Whatever job you are in find a purpose. The truth is jobs are stressful, dejected with any form of positivity, degraded to the silly passions of life and eventually leading each one of us to find something, that we are not even aware of. We need to set some cultures that are readily talking about human beings along with business goals and mere Excel sheets. We are doing business because we want to make money and that is not a very hopeful and meaningful way to look for joy. May be a good thing for our daily comfort but not an interminable thing. We also need people in this picture.
Sameness Kills Joy
Don’t think that being different is a defect. A reminder – that total efficiency is for robots not for humans.
We all have stories to share. The thrills and adventures are in it. The doom and gloom sets in and also does happiness and joy. We are never going to find any joy in sameness. It creates redundancy.
Thus, when I write these letters I am in this hope that you will one day look back and say you had a fulfilling life, devoid of sameness, with zero or minimum regrets. You made it through the amber-hot times and still found joy.
Now I shift gears as your weekly curator and here are some incredible internet finds –
To read and ponder:
I went around the web and discovered this great podcast called On Being with Krista Tippett. She interviewed Maira Kalman, a famous writer and illustrator. Maria lost her husband when he was just 49 years old, still, it looks like she understood the joy of departing among many, “My husband died at the age of 49. I could collapse, thinking about that. But I don’t want to talk about that now. I want to say that I love that George is nearby under a leafy tree.”
I compiled a few of her terrific statements related to today’s topic. Here you go:
- “Even in their sorrow or suffering, that something registered in me that said, you can observe really unhappy relationships and still find a good one.”
- “It sounds very simple because, of course, some things don’t work out, and it’s not always such a straight line.”
- “And, you know, leaves grow on trees, and birds sit in trees, and birds sing, and it’s a whole beautiful package.”
- “And it is very true that the most tender, uncomplicated, most generous part of our being blossoms without any effort when it comes to the love of a dog.”
- “The thing that happens when you meet people is that all generalizations fly out the window. And you realize that people are leading very particular and very complex lives and that you can’t just make blanket statements”
To watch:
Watch this video – In the Blink of an Eye by Melodysheep – a remarkable way to know that the universe and stars can move spaces counting trillion years. I honestly could not even count zeros in it!
Yet all this happens in the blink of an eye!
To Joy Scroll:
I stumbled upon this artist named Brock DeBoer, through some random links within links and was mesmerized to see how beautifully he crafted the ordinary everyday stuff into porcelain masterpieces. They are actually captivating and dainty in themselves. Also, a sticky-note for myself that these ordinary everyday things hold a great deal of memories. It’s not the things it is the people behind those things! The link to his masterpieces is here.
To end:
Where is the real joy? by Hugh MacLeod – Gapingvoid
“One of the things we affluent, supposedly happy Westerners suffer from, is that we like to make our lives far too complicated.
We take on far too much responsibility at work, we buy houses that are far too big for our families, we spend far too much money going out, fancy cars etc., we try to read far too many books, we buy far too many toys, the list goes on.
And then the bill comes… as it always does.
You’re much better off with a simple life.
The simple life begins not with stuff, but from the human heart.
The latter, by the way, doesn’t scale.
True happiness is an inward journey.
That’s where the real joy is.
Good luck.”
I hope that you will inherit the glimpses of joy and even when sorrow strikes, joy will be your heritage. Till then shift your thoughts towards the slanting autumn sunrays slowly so that when the spring arrives joy will arrive too.
-Anugrah
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