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Days of Inexplicable Joy
Unexpected adventures growing old.
In a few days, I will turn 73. I have been retired for four years. It is summer here in Oregon and the sun is shining after a long, wet winter. Many mornings this summer, I get up and go about my daily routine and find myself experiencing inexplicable joy. There is no reason for it. My days and the things I do with them are no different from six months or a year ago, but I didn’t feel joy then. For no reason, these days I do.
I never thought much about joy. My recent joyful days have shown me that, although I have had a rich life, there hasn’t been a lot of joy in it. I’ve had challenging, exciting, and deeply rewarding experiences. Some of them were wonderful, and I can bathe in memories of my triumphs as well as any old man, but I don’t remember much joy. At least, not the ungrounded and inexplicable joy I often feel today.
I remember the joys of accomplishment, a job well done, and of good luck, receiving the bounties that life drops upon us. I have been joyful when things went my way — after passing the bar exam, after marrying a woman I loved, or divorcing a woman I didn’t. But those joys had causes. They were the aftereffects of good fortune. The joy I have been experiencing lately is unmoored from any windfall or achievement. It arises from nothing and signifies nothing. I didn’t ask for it or seek it out. It isn’t a reward. It settles on me like sunshine, stays for as long as it likes, and slips away when I am not looking.
Living in a family and a community has meant having a lot of people tell me how to feel. Feel this way. Don’t feel that way. Mostly, it’s good advice, and if I could follow it and choose my feelings the way I choose what to eat at a restaurant, I would do it. But I can’t. I can’t select a tasty sounding item from the feelings menu and later send it back if it is served cold. My feelings don’t work that way.
I don’t know how they do work, but it isn’t that way.
In my spiritual community, we emphasize gratefulness. If mired in self-pity, we are encouraged to make a list of the good things and replace the self-pity with gratefulness. I’ve done it, and as far as manipulating feelings goes, it sometimes works and it sometimes doesn’t. We have no directions for manipulating joy.
