find joy

by Dannel I. Schwartz. This book has been sitting on my shelf for a number of years, but I decided to revisit it this week after looking at Marianne Williamson’s Everyday Grace. It introduces some principles of Jewish mysticism, Kaballah.

Here’s a funny one about this…if you believe in the book “The Secret”....I had written my list on a paper in the car this afternoon, then went to the library, where I saw a woman I’ve met once. Her name is Joy.

I want to find joy again. I’m at the end of a two year, very difficult and volatile relationship that I’m finally starting to admit was verbally abusive, after all my friends asked me about it, over and over. I owe them one.

I used to find joy in small things, in smells and breezes and friends. I want to find that again—unbury it from wherever it has gone, coax it out into the light again, and encourage it to sing.

am depressed sinc 3 years now. its getting to be ugly am giving up on friends,career, family, life, and i want to stop. i want to find joy and start living…still searching i dont know how and where to start.

I’m working to open the windows of my mind and soul to recognize the joy and happiness inside and outside of me from all angles. I’m doing this by actively focusing on doing “fun things”. Weird, but I actually have to push myself sometimes to do it and most of the time am very glad I did. It helps me to focus less on my problems and the lightness of it all makes me experience the joys in my life more freely.

Lately I’ve been able to find joy in accepting situations as they are. I can choose to do this instead of becoming disillusioned with life when people don’t act the way I want them to or situations become difficult. I am learning that all of life really is the the way that you see it. Being happy can be as simple as putting on a pair of rose colored glasses. Not that you have to be ignorant of negative feelings to be happy but i am starting to find that joy is at the core of everything. Everything that is encountered in life: people, situations, struggles, longing, all have joy at the source. Whatever form a situation takes when it is presented, the joy can be found if I search for it.

Maybe I’m just feeling good because it’s finally warm outside =) Well what ever the reason i’m going to jump on that train (as my friend would say).

I’m actually not feeling joyful but i’m trying to find joy even when episodes of my life do not follow a fairy tale ending. Currently, I feel trapped in my relationship with my boyfriend which is making me sad because I think it may not work in the long run. I have a crush on another person that I work with and I keep hoping it will pass but life is not that simple for me. Maybe joy is found in simplicity, in which case i am overcomplicating my life too much. I just hate the lonely feeling that always comes. maybe i overthink everything and i should just exist and take life as it comes. well, I don’t know, maybe finding true joy is a goal that is unacheivable.

Over the past 2-3 years I have found happiness, in little pieces along the way which I gathered and stuck together. Now, I have a patchwork quilt idea of happiness which I cling to. I would like to be able to find the true joy in each moment of being alive.

I did have joy in my life 2 years ago. That was when I first started up my company. I just bought my own place. and I had a book out. Life was good. And then it became life again, mundane and routine.

It seems to me that you need to keep doing new things to keep your life fresh. I know people who are comfortable with just doing the same things day in day out, and they seem happy. But I’m not built like that, I guess.

So my challenge is to find joy, and then figure out a way to keep it going in my life.

my mentor and best friend of 8 years and it was like the final piece in a puzzle being screwed into my head. Being accepted and loved by someone not even related to me by blood was a major buzz- and the euphoria has settled into a happy, stable calm. I wake up now feeling more stable, less like this disconnected, tumbling leaf in the wind, sturdier, rooted.

I think joy is impossible to feel if you feel like you are unloved. And if that feeling runs deep, it can take a long time to overcome it.

BUT IT IS DEFINATELY WORTH IT. A few years ago, I wanted to be dead. I couldn’t conceive of life ever being “worth it”. So much has changed since then that it is unbelievable.

These days, coming out of an almost life long depression, I can feel myself smiling at simple things- the smell of freshly cut spring grass, or the movements of pigeons as they bob around int he early morning, pecking at some discared pastry wrapper. Before I saw these things, felt, heard, experienced them… but they couldn’t penetrate the gray, lifeless depression that clung to me.

So my advice is, if you are depressed and have been for a long time, to look at your past, your upbringing, and to make a list of your true friends, those people who you would trust with your darkest secrets and not fear their scorn or that they would reject you….

without love people, even if their bodies survive, spiritually go into a sort of coma. And working to get out of it is one of the most important things I think a person can do in this life time!

The tricky thing about depression is that the depressed person won’t THINK or FEEL like working towards joy and happiness. The trend is to sink further into the muck and despair.

But take heart- changes happen slowly. But they do happen. Eating right, taking meds, finding someone to talk to (for depression sufferers) and getting enough sleep are all good first steps, but you need to feel both fulfilled and appreciated in your life’s work and also loved, I think, to really feel joy.

Just my two cents worth.

Lex