week 17
looking for joy
My failure this week is that I couldn’t find joy. I really mean it, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t looking for it. It wasn’t that this week was the worst— in fact, it was fairly mild and I felt like I knocked off quite a few things from the to-do list. But I couldn’t find joy in any of it, and it felt like the more I tried to catch it the more it ran away from me, and the faster I tried to run the more my body was falling into quicksand.
And then serendipitously, I turned on a podcast featuring Martha Beck and heard:
“...And I thought joy is its own excuse for being, that is the one thing I can experience that makes it worth sticking around for the suffering this life entails. So I shifted my entire life toward a sort of very simple test. Does it bring me joy or does it not? And joy became the track I was following.”
Beck talks about relaxation is the first step toward accessing joy in the body, and then tracking joy like an animal’s footprints in the path. She also discusses finding joy through her year of not lying at all, and what it cost her— her job, marriage, family of origin, everything. But here’s how it started:
“When I heard the statement, “The truth will set you free,” it brought me a sense of joy, a sense of peace. So I thought, I don’t know exactly what to do or what the truth is, so I’m just not going to lie for a year and we’ll see what happens. We’ll find out what the truth is. And I found out that mostly what I was lying about, I didn’t tell lies about my taxes or anything, or in my personal life even, I was telling lies about how I felt.”
I haven’t been truly relaxed in who knows how long, which turns out makes it really difficult to find and embrace joy. I have been in survival mode, and I have been in survival mode for what feels like a really, really, really long time. I don’t know that I have been completely honest with myself— no, I know I have not been completely honest with myself, so I can’t be completely honest with others. I have not been completely honest with what brings my joy and comfort and peace and my true self, and closer to who I want to be, and though I may not know all the things that do, I know within my soul the things that do not.
So, I decided to do something that I’ve been meaning to try since I first heard about it a few months ago. Do what Elizabeth Gilbert calls a letter to and from unconditional love. I wrote at the top of my journal page:
Dear Love, what what would you have me know today?
Dear Rachel, you are not trapped and you are not stuck. You have often felt these things because people in your life who love you sometimes scare the agency within you. You obey them and let your agency get shaken because you love them and sometimes assume what they are saying is the part of them that knows what’s best for you. They do want the best for you. But their voices telling you want to do or what not do is not their love for you or truly knowing what’s best for you. It’s their own fear.
Your job is to not give into the fear. You are not a reckless person. But staying in a place that is killing you is being reckless. It is like staying inside of a burning car because you’re scared you will get burned leaving. The fear is justified. You might very well get burned. But you will die a sure death staying inside the car. It’s time to be brave now and get out of the car. And once you do, you will know that you can walk through fire in the name of following your true self.
I have not been able to get the burning car image out of my mind since it suddenly appeared. It is as if I have been inside a burning car, and have been thinking about all sorts of things as I slowly suffocate:
How did I end up in this car?
Was this car really heading in the direction that I wanted to be going?
This is my only car, what will I do without one?
Will I be able to find a better car?
Do I just need to find a different car, with different problems?
What if I can’t find another car?
Maybe I don’t even need a car, and I should just bum rides?
Will I need to hitchhike after I get out of the car?
Did I even want this car that was bestowed upon me in the first place?
Does anyone really enjoy cars, besides maybe car enthusiasts?
Are cars necessary evils in the world we humans have created?
These questions are fine and potentially worth delving into, but nothing is as important and urgent as getting out of the damned burning car.
So this is my mantra over the coming weeks, when I feel stuck, paralyzed by indecision: Just get out of the burning car.