“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a Spring clean for the May queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.”
~Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven lyrics
Somewhere, deep in our molecular makeup, we hold a concept of a perfect world.
We have an intuition that in a dimension we can’t quite identify, everything is beautiful and pleasing, and every sentient being is entirely free of suffering and delusion and overflowing with joy. We might not believe it is a real place. But still, we love to imagine it.
And when we do imagine it, we can’t help but want that place to be here, and we ask why it couldn’t be and what would we have to do to bring it here, to transform this into that.
Some folks get to being creative, inspired by the concept of moving toward that ideal, that Paradise thing. They invent things and methods to contribute to joy and ease, to enhance and enrich life in some way.
Some folks, unfortunately, get mad that Paradise isn’t here and find other folks to blame that on, and then the whole big drama of human history unfolds. Maybe it’s matter of living on this binary holodeck called Earth, where everyone inevitably gets damaged to some extent, because there’s no such thing here as perfection.
Nevertheless, even here, you get to choose whether you’ll live in darkness or in light. It’s a moment-to-moment choice. And being a joy warrior means being aware that the choice exists, always.
The choice for joy may seem like an impossibility when you’re in a pit of despair. But you’re never irreversibly stuck. The fact that we struggle so hard to climb out of the pits into which we fall is proof of that.
Things change. That’s another feature of life on Earth. I own a little rock that has the word “Change” engraved in it sitting on my window sill. It reminds me that life is in constant flow. My task as a joy warrior is to learn to steer my thoughts and actions in a way that lets me ride the best currents I can find.
Later on in this series, I’ll talk about the enemies of joy I’ve encountered and share some of the tools I found that let me banish them, or at least to cut them down to size. For now, let me assure you that hope is always available to you, however dim and far away it may look from your current perspective.
Hold on to hope. Darkness is never complete, and it can be conquered by one little glimmer of light.