Choosing Joy

Mother and daughter
detail (the daughter's face)
acrylic on canvas
Barbara Muir © 2009
(I've been working on the daughter's face today
and I'm almost there -- a joyous feeling!)

I'm reading Alexander McCall Smith's novel The Comforts
of a Muddy Saturday, one book in the Isabel Dalhousie
series. Isabel is a very serious philosopher who edits The
Review of Applied Ethics, and part of the delight in reading
the novel is thinking about the moral questions she's
wrestling with.

So I'm thinking about joy today because it's my wedding
anniversary. And I think the lesson that my contemporaries
have to learn -- not an easy one -- is to choose joy over
sorrow, or discontentment, or negativity in general.
We were raised in an era that frowned on excesses,
especially childhood ones, so we were taught not to be
overly -- loud, funny, silly -- fill in the blanks. If we
didn't finish our supper we were told to "eat it because
children in (name the country) were starving." We were
weaned and raised on a level of guilt about our every
desire that seems hard to imagine now.

But even when Sam was a very little boy, four or
five, and he's nineteen now, I was frequently informed
by his teachers that he was "silly." I used to walk
home from these meetings thinking, 'good -- I've
done something right.' So celebrating in some ways
goes against the grain -- requiring excess, gifts, joy,
laughter, a bit of abandon. Maybe that's why I've always
enjoyed parties, and being with friends. Deep down
I'm probably rebelling against the strictures of our
childhood life. So maybe a restrictive childhood is
not a bad thing. It's placed a large bell in my head
that I hear every day demanding "Fun! Fun! Fun!

I am happy that it's my anniversary -- and have only
the sweetest of memories of my life with Steven today.
We have been blessed with choosing joy most of the
time.

Have a joyous-celebratory day.