Being Cajun French and raised in a household of Cajuns, I heard a lot of French when I was growing up. One of the sayings my mother and grandmother taught me was "joie de vivre", which means joy in living, a delight in being alive, and a keen carefree enjoyment of living.
This morning, in my quiet time, the word joy kept coming to me. As I thought on it I became very aware of how little pure joy I actually experience in my daily life. I remember when I was a child how excited I would get about a lot of little things. Going to the movies on Sunday afternoon, playing paper dolls or reading a good book, running wild and free in the yard with friends, a cousin spending the night and many other day by day occurrences would send me whooping and hollering through the house in delight and anticipation. The smallest and simplest things filled me with joy.
And then I grew up and found myself caught up in the process of life and I somewhere lost sight of what really mattered. It's not that I don't have joy in my life, it just seems the moments of joy are not enough. Thomas Merton said, "The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little" and as I look around me and listen to others, I believe many of us have settled for too little in the name of being an adult.
My heart longs to touch joy more, to revel in being alive and living the wonderful life I get to live. It is too easy to get caught up in the seriousness and the busyness of it all and forget to experience joie de vevre..Every day chores like cooking, cleaning, errands, paying bills, writing and whatever else shows up in my day sometimes feel like a drag and something I need to get through. I want to change that.
I want to focus on the light and on the goodness in life. I want to take time to delight in the simple things in life and not get caught up in the "to do's." I want to learn to step back and laugh at some of the outrageous, ridiculous and often times meaningless things I do or say in life in an effort to get it all done, maintain the status quo, be right and keep life under control.
I believe we all embody joy. It is a part of who we are, and for many, in the process of growing up and being and behaving as others told us how we were supposed to be, we learned to ignore it and set it aside. It is up to each of us to allow self to feel the delights of life. Imagine how different life would be if we all lightened up and allowed self and others to experience and express delight.
I have a little three year old neighbor girl who likes to come to my house to play with my granddaughter's dog, Sami. She squeals and laughs and becomes totally engross in her interaction with the dog. As I watch her I am so aware of the pure delight she is experiencing. I also am aware that her delight in the simple things in life is still evident because it has not been taken away by the adults in her life, nor has it been squelched. She has no problem rolling on the floor with Sami.
As I think about this precious child and the joy she has, I feel the desire and resolve within me to return to a life of joie de vevre. I am going to recapture that part of myself that has been set aside. I will keep you posted!!
No comments:
Post a Comment