Finding joy is easier said than done
It’s been a long, hard winter, longer and harder than most.
My mother-in-law passed away. My own mother had to transition to full nursing-home care after a couple of falls in her memory-care apartment left her hospitalized with a blood clot in her leg and pretty much wheelchair-dependent.
I’ve also been dealing for months with shooting nerve pain in my lower back from what doctors more or less diagnosed as sacroiliac joint dysfunction, apparently exacerbated by, of all things, excessively picking up my 28-pound granddaughter and schlepping her around on my right hip. After a steroid injection and months in physical therapy I think I’m on the mend. I’ve been very motivated to beat this back thing because, as many of you know, I have to hike a mile to and from the Alaskan glacier where my daughter is getting married in June.
So when I was lying in bed early one morning this week thinking about what to write about (I typically get my column inspiration at about 4 a.m., though this idea came to me at 3:45 a.m.), I wondered how other people find joy amid those seemingly joyless times in our lives. Most people can put on a happy face when they need to, but I’m talking about those rare souls who go through life truly joyful.
To learn more, I picked the first person who came to mind: Mark, our janitor — nay, sanitation engineer extraordinaire — at the Daily Inter Lake. The minute I see him each morning he puts me in a good mood with his humor and easy conversation. This is the guy who on Friday had to clean out our lunchroom refrigerator and dispose of employees’ rotting salmon, moldy sandwiches and slimy, unidentifiable containers of sludge.
Yet he was happy as a lark.
“How do you do it? I asked. “How do you find joy in your job?”
His response was priceless.
“I choose to be a positive influence,” Mark told me. “It’s a conscious choice. I’ve been doing it so long it’s a habit.”
He went on to say he’d grown up amid some pretty harsh circumstances, where humor became his saving grace. And even though a bum knee means he can’t do the rigorous sports he once enjoyed, he rejoices in what he’s still able to do.
I need to be more like Mark.
There’s plenty of advice online about finding joy: laugh, be forgiving, choose optimism, do things for others — you get the idea. But until you see someone like Mark walking the talk, so to speak, it’s empty blather. It’s easy to vow to have a positive attitude and always see the glass as half-full, but it’s a difficult thing to perpetuate day after day. Don’t get me wrong; I count my blessings, to be sure. But even thankfulness and joyfulness are two different things.
Our quest for joy is as old as humankind. Composers and writers have had it in their minds for centuries — “Ode to Joy,” “ Joy to the World, “Joyful, Joyful,” and even Three Dog Night’s more contemporary version of “Joy to the World” with that well-known refrain: “...Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea and joy to you and me.”
I’m still working on finding and nurturing the joy in my life. People like Mark are my inspiration.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.