joy /joi/ – noun – a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

Last week, I posted on my facebook page, “Find joy!”.  One response was…

This is the main reason I read your posts: you and your friends bring me joy (usually in the form of laughter, but whatever works, right?

As individuals, we all encounter the world in different ways with different challenges & struggles as well as with differing resources.  That often makes finding joy not the same. And as we have become physically isolated from our co-workers, friends, parents, childrens and community members many of us have encountered an entire new path to find joy.

One of the resources I have is the experience I had when I was a brand newly sworn-in Peace Corps Volunteer.  I was assigned to a village with three months training in French and landed with family and a community that would not speak un seul mot de français avec moi.  For three months, I worked on learning the language of the village, Pulaar. I recall writing to my mom explaining I was the most ignorant person in the entire village; even the toddlers could ask for their basic needs.  It was disconsolate. 

This experience, set the natural extrovert in me to look inwards in a way I had never experienced to push me away from the despair of the social and emotional isolation.  I needed to find joy, because I was losing it.  

I read a lot of books (I know ALL the Tom Clancy stories… that he wrote; started and finished Roots which began close to my site; The English Patient was better as a book!).  I created a dictionary and studied this brand new language. I watched people do things I had never seen before. I took long walks and realized the sunset’s beautiful colors are also visible in the east opposite the setting sun.  Finding joy for me in isolation was learning new things. Eventually, my language improved and I was back to “normal” telling jokes and connecting with people as I was accustomed.

Humor has always been a great pleasure of mine and a joyful way to connect with people.  Learning new things, as well. We all are different. Over the next few [expletive deleted], I’ve started or plan to do the following:

• Talk to my my mom more and share laughs
• Bake the brownies of my childhood
• Go through my comic book collection
• Throw away items that have followed me through over a dozen moves
• Re-watch The Wire (maybe it’s the 5th time)
• Volunteer with my neighbors to staff a emergency resource hotline
• Develop my own capoeira practice (improve my portuguese, music and movement)
• Zoom with friends that I share laughter
• Listen to my current favorite spotify playlist of 2020 Grammy Songs I Feel 

I reached out to some friends and this is the assorted list they came up with to find joy:

• Taking online dance and fitness classes
• Gardening 
• Returning to home brewing
• Joining spotify and re-creating old mix tapes
• Daily walks with my little people
• Listening to DJ  D-Nice spin on instagram 
• Writing in my journal
• Sitting on my porch listening to music with my dog and greeting my neighbors
• Reading trashy novels
• Carbs (‘nuff said)
• Trying new recipes
• It’s a good time for bird watching
• Golden Girls, everyday!
• Bubble bath 
• Finally started doing that podcast that I’ve been putting off forever
• Doing fun things with my kids without feeling rushed like we have to get on to the next thing

What’s on your list?

Hoping you’re finding joy during these times.  Please take this as an opportunity to share how you are finding joy with your WES community.  Check in with someone you haven’t been in contact with for awhile. Reach out to a new member.  Have a joyful week!

Maceo

Membership Coordinator