דְּלֵית נְהוֹרָא אֶלָּא הַהוּא דְּנָפִיק מִגּוֹ חֲשׁוֹכָא
Zohar
There is no greater light than the light that emerges out of the darkness.
Rabbi Alan Lew, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared
And when we speak of joy here, we are not speaking of fun. Joy is a deep release of the soul, and it includes death and pain. Joy is any feeling fully felt, any experience we give our whole being to. We are conditioned to choose pleasure and to reject pain, but the truth is, any moment of our life fully inhabited, any feeling fully felt, any immersion in the full depth of life, can be the source of deep joy.
Questions to Consider
a. What is your relationship to joy? Is it something you prioritize? Feel guilty about? Are surprised by?
b. Share a moment in which you were overwhelmed with a sense of joy. What did it feel like?
c. Studies show that sharing our joy has an equal or greater impact on our emotional well-being than even experiencing it in the first place. What joy have you found in sharing a wondrous moment with others?
Joy And Sorrow Chapter VIII – Khalil Gibran
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidism, p.231
The Rebbe was asked: What is the right way, that of sorrow or that of joy?
He answered: There are two kinds of sorrow and two kinds of joy. When a person broods over the misfortunes that have come upon him, when he cowers in a corner and despairs that is a bad kind of sorrow. The other kind is the honest kind of grief of a person who knows what they lack. The same is true of joy. One who is devoid of inner substance and, in the midst of empty pleasures, does not feel it, nor tries to fill their lack, is a fool. But one who is truly joyful is like a person whose house has burned down, who feels their need deep in their soul and begins to build anew. Over every stone that is laid, their heart rejoices.”
| אדם בחייו/ יהודה עמיחי
אָדָם בְּחַיָּיו אֵין לוֹ זְמַן שֶׁיִּהְיֶה לוֹ אָדָם צָרִיךְ לִשְׂנֹא וְלֶאֱהֹב בְּבַת אַחַת, וְלִשְׂנֹא וְלִסְלֹחַ וְלִזְכֹּר וְלִשְׁכֹּחַ אָדָם בְּחַיָּיו אֵין לוֹ זְמַן. מוֹת תְּאֵנִים יָמוּת בַּסְּתָו |
A Man In His Life
Yehuda Amichai
A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
Questions To Consider
a. Do these texts challenge or change your understanding of what it means to feel joy? How? Have you ever experienced the kind of joy these thinkers are describing?
b. What could you do to create space for more joy in your life?
Invitation To Practice: Take a Joy Break (The Amen Effect p.186)
Dedicate just a few minutes each day to consciously do something you absolutely love, just because you love it. Remember: joy does not preclude mourning but lives inside it. If we love fully, we should celebrate fully, even as we grieve deeply.