Journal of Joy

Journal of Joy

What a lovely idea!

The book "Option C" by Sheryl Sandberg introduced me to this concept. I find it so much easier than a gratitude diary. Joy…what makes you feel good….even if it is the monsoon breeze, is so much easier to enumerate. So let’s begin:

June 10, 2018

1. A phone conversation with xyz was Joy. I had so much to tell, and she understood it all perfectly. She traded information about books we had read. And I confided that I felt ready to write….but write what?
   I told her about the similarities between Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, which I am reading currently, and Anne of Green Gables, the serial I just finished watching called Anne with an E. Anne spouts dialogues and text from Jane Eyre and they are so profound. What an amazingly positive character, Anne, in the face of such adversity. Each day is a new possibility, she feels, anything is possible.
   And the Greek Way by Edith Hamilton….what a perspective on the Greeks:
   We think and feel differently because of what a little Greek town did during a century or two, twenty-four hundred years ago. What was then produced of art and of thought has
   never been surpassed and very rarely equaled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art
   and all the thought of the Western world.
   Very different conditions of life confronted them from those we face, but it is ever to
   be borne in mind that though the outside of human life changes much, the inside
   changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience.
   Great literature, past or present, is the expression of great knowledge of the human
   heart; great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of
   the world without and that within; and in the wisdom of either there would seem to be small progress. [Read and reread to get the profundity!]
2. Baking is Joy when the results make you happy. A cake with bits of bitter chocolate and a loaf of bread that is not bad. What bliss.
3. The weather, the cool breeze, the clouds…..and the leisure to read.
4. Watched Woman of Gold. Amazing film
5. And spoke to my son and heard him Happy. Made my day.

June 11, 2018

1. My terrible haircut is not looking so bad after one day and coloring and setting. Life is not about one bad haircut!
2. Cool breeze that makes me want to sit near the bedroom window and sing. But I do breathing exercises.
3. What beauty in the small yellow lily in the small pot on my balcony.
4. Recorded an impromptu birthday wish for spmeone's 60^th….along with a poem found on the Net. I surprise myself sometimes! The last line was inspiring: There’s just no time to be old.
   Now is a great age to take chances
   And do all you want to do,
   Your creativity knows no bounds
   What you need is right in you.
   Your wisdom is wiser than ever
   Your spirit is bolder than bold,
   Your humor is more humorous
   There’s just no time to be old.

June 12, 2018

1. An active and participative day in office. Even as I feel I am contributing more and participating more, we are planning the next phase. A new experience from there.
2. The yellow flower continues to give joy as we have breakfast.

June 20, 2018

1. We quarreled and then I could not see JOY. Strange.
2. The Bucket List is a wonderful film.
3. The shapes in clouds as they stream past.
4. The early morning glow in the sky, much before the sun rises.
5. Joy in the picture of the baby who has the potential to complete the lives of our friends.