"I had thought joy to be synonymous with happiness, but it now seems far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be part of the unconditional will to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us. Rather than the warrior who fights toward a specific outcome and therefore is haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment, it is the lover drunk with the opportunity to love despite the possibility of loss, the player for whom playing has become more important than winning or losing. The willingness to win or lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness. From such a position, we can make a greater commitment to life. Not only pleasant life, or comfortable life, or our idea of life, but all life. Joy seems more closely related to aliveness than to happiness."
From Rachel Naomi Remen's Kitchen Table Wisdom:
"I had thought joy to be synonymous with happiness, but it now seems far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be part of the unconditional will to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us. Rather than the warrior who fights toward a specific outcome and therefore is haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment, it is the lover drunk with the opportunity to love despite the possibility of loss, the player for whom playing has become more important than winning or losing. The willingness to win or lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness. From such a position, we can make a greater commitment to life. Not only pleasant life, or comfortable life, or our idea of life, but all life. Joy seems more closely related to aliveness than to happiness."
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AuthorTarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm and numerous essays. You may read more of her work at tarnwilson.com. Archives
September 2020
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