You’re not selfish to want joy

It is not selfish to want to be happy and find your bliss.

What's the alternative? Cultivating a life of pain and sorrow?

Friend, those things will find you no matter what you do. Seeking happiness is not wrong, as long as it's not at someone else's expense.

Happiness tends to be triggered by external factors and influences - winning, achieving, attaining, being affirmed, receiving... But joy?

JD Salinger said: "Happiness is a solid, joy is a liquid."

Happiness is stagnant, joy has a wild and holy flow to it.

In Ancient Hebrew, the word for "joy" is Simcha. In the Torah, Simcha was not an individual experience; it had a collective quality. It's not something to be won, but something to be shared.

In his book, Nehemiah, and his friend Ezra, were reading the words of the revelation (not the one that we know from the Biblical text…) out to their people. They had completed restoring Jerusalem, and many exiles had returned to the beloved city. But as the words washed over them, the people grieved - the weight of the words filling them with sorrow. Nehemiah said to them:

"Go home and prepare a feast, holiday food and drink; and share it with those who don't have anything: This day is holy to God. Don't feel bad. The joy of God is your strength!" *

The joy was in their shared experience: drinking and eating and celebrating; sharing with those who had nothing, everyone at the table, no-one missing out. This kind of joy? This kind of celebrating? This kind of sharing and including and togetherness?

There's a wild and uncontainable strength in that.

Frederick Buechner said:

"Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God's will."

The Ancient Jewish people knew how to celebrate no matter what they were going through. Alan King once said that every Jewish holiday could be summed up as: "They tried to kill us. We survived! Let's eat!"

The rituals and traditions they observed, and still do, gave strength to their joy; gave it structure and form and practice. The power of joy comes from its communal nature. It's not focused on the individual attaining or achieving something outside of itself. But on collective sharing and cooperating; giving of oneself to others in a circular manner.

Joy blooms out of what you believe about yourself, others, and the world. It comes when you make peace with who are you, how you are, why you are, and what you have to give rather than what you can take.

Happiness is a solid. You can pursue it, hold onto it, hoard it, pop it on the mantlepiece. And you can acquire many different items of happiness over the course of a life.

But joy is liquid; all you can do is let it flow and pour it from glass to glass.

(This post is an excerpt from The Practice Co App series called "Re-Wild Your Joy", available to download for iOS and Android! It includes daily devotionals, phone wallpapers, a daily mindful prompt and more included. Start with a free trial or subscribe to get access to each new series as they come out.)

Mindful prompt: When you're with others, see if you can train yourself to notice the joy that buzzes in the foundation of things when people come together. Notice that as the Divine is in you, the Divine is in everyone you cross paths with today. Acknowledge it, and bless it.

Much love from  Liz Milani.
Instagram: @thepracticeco