Rod and I are changing things up. We, drum roll please, are moving in together in May. Yes, it’s true we have been dating for 5 years and we don’t live together and have moved through our love life slowly and as strategically as possible.
So, here’s the thing now that it’s around the corner and I am getting super excited, I have MASSIVE joy issues. Foreboding joy to be exact. What’s that?
It’s the dark side of this thing we throw around called Joy.
I was thinking of where we would set things up in the house (have I mentioned that I LOVE DECORATING?!) and he loves everything I do so this is even better. But I had a thought this morning.
Wait for it.
What if I die before May?
WTF
I am healthy, not on any terminal protocol besides the one we are all on, with an inevitable expiry date. Chances are I will be here.
As in extreme probability.
SO, what’s up?
Joy’s got a ‘dark side’.
It can be foreboding.
Joy is one of the most vulnerable emotions out there. I’m almost regretting picking this emotion as one of my faves at this point.
It’s so good at times that we have this GUSH of goodness and in the next moment because of its vulnerability we feel this doomsday message, and in some of our cases, a crazy message.
Like my ‘dying’ thing.
The foreboding piece of joy can keep us from feeling the goodness of it.
We avoid celebrating things like business deals and promotions, because it can reinforce the foreboding.
We feel like maybe the foreboding part is whispering some truth to us and we should listen. Closely.
The key is not to avoid the joy, the celebrations, the honouring the goodness. It is our invitation to know Joy more deeply.
When Joy is intense, it just IS foreboding. It’s like most people and middle names. It’s common and it just is part of Joy.
Here’s first name: Joy, middle name: Foreboding.
We risk missing out on joy because we want to avoid the vulnerability of it.
When I took my oldest home from the hospital, I looked at her while she was sleeping and my next thought was, “how do we protect her from dying of SIDS?”. She hadn’t even been home for an hour.
Sometimes we give into the foreboding part to prepare in some odd way for the impending end. We don’t get too attached to people or things because if it feels too good to be true it probably is. Joy is that good. Pure Yum.
People who have been through tragedy and have dressed rehearsed for it, expecting the worst, do not have an easier time when devastation hits. It’s the opposite, they wished they had squeezed all the goodness out of the deliciousness of Joy. They wished they had lived and loved more fully.
We need Joy. It’s the light in our lives that when strung together gives us the fuel to keep going in the darkest of times.
Once we know joy and its sidekick, we can ‘lock’ those intense moments of joy and the doomsday cries that sometimes accompany it with:
Gratitude.
So, when I look at the new throw pillows that I adore and the man that loves me so much and I worry I will die, I think of what I am grateful for so I can experience the joy we were all made for.
Gratitude is to foreboding, what water is to fire. Douse that intense feeling with some gratitude and the foreboding loses its sting. Then you can step back into the magic of what Joy brings you.
The next time you feel intense joy and the foreboding rears its ugly head find anything to be thankful for in that moment and you’ll feel more of the joy that we all so desperately need.
Lots of love