Somewhat unbelievably, I haven't posted on here since September. Brief summary since then: Rome, Thailand, Rome, work, grad school applications, home for surgery, holidays, and soon back to Rome. Life has had ups and downs over the past few months as life generally does. Nothing too crazy to report.
Though not entirely sure why, I've become a little bit obsessed with asking one specific question of both people I've met over the last few months and also those close to me. The question has received a whole host of interesting answers, all fascinating to me. I've been trying to focus on the question in my own life and find a different answer every day.
The question: What is a simple joy in your life?
I love this question. It's got a lot going on in just a few words that really make people think. First, what is something that brings them joy, but also, to qualify it with the word 'simple' ironically makes it considerably more complicated. Does it mean that the joy is trivial or that it means less? I don't think so. To me, 'simple' means this: something ordinary, perhaps that you take for granted. Something that's part of your everyday life that brings you joy.
I've been asking people this question since my trip to Thailand. Things seemed so much simpler there. I could see joy on people's faces for no apparent reason. It struck me. In today's society, joy always seems to be so complex. We don't think we can have joy in our lives without the perfect partner, the perfect friends, the perfect job. We obsess over perfection, and boy, did I fall into that in 2016. It wasn't until I started to search for joy in the little things that what I considered a relatively poor season of mental health turned into one of the better times in my life during recent memory.
Answers to the question have ranged from "when my daughter crawls into bed and wakes me up in the morning" to "the right song at exactly the right moment." When I first answered the question, my go-to was "morning coffee." There's nothing better than a hot coffee, the kick in the butt from the caffeine, and the people generally surrounding me as I enjoy it. Last night, I laughed about ridiculous nonsense with Pedro, and I thought to myself, "What a joy just being silly is." I spoke at length with Conor on FaceTime yesterday, and beyond the joy of talking to a close friend and catching up, I took simple joy from the fact that FaceTime exists (it's really amazing).
Life is so full of moments where complaining is the easy option. Dwelling on bad things actually takes no effort. It's the natural reaction, I think. All of us fall into that from time to time. 2016 seems to have really weighed on people. A tense election, deaths of prominent people, talk of the ongoing effects of climate change, campus rape stories, fake news, and seemingly one bad bit of information after the next.
If we allow that inundation of negativity to take hold, that becomes us. That becomes our lives, and we don't even realize it. It has become me at times in my life. It becomes me on bad days. I had a dream recently about a flood, and I woke up and thought for hours about this weird analogy for the way we live our lives. For so many of us, life exists in a flood plain. When there's no flood, things are fertile and good, but all it takes is a few days of rain for that flood to come crashing in to wipe us out.
In other words, life is often this crazy rollercoaster of ups and downs, and you're either up or you're down. I think I've been asking the question about simple joys to combat that in my life. I shouldn't have weeks or months of downturn. There's always simple joys around me, and since I've started taking notice, I feel better. Tough days have become less tough, and good days have become richer.
I'm a very, very lucky man when I take the time to reflect on it. So, in 2017, for you and for me, I will continue to ask the question. I hope it makes the pet peeves and the tiny annoyances and the Big Bang-like floods of negative energy feel like less of a burden. All the best to you and yours in the coming year. I've got a lot of change coming over the next year, so I imagine I'll be writing more in an effort to process my thoughts and feelings about it all. Thanks for keeping up with me, and thanks for being a joy in my life!
