Starry Night

Welcome to Tuesday’s with Chel.

Each week Chel Micheline of Gingerblue will offer her perspectives on our Bliss Habits. Please enjoy the wisdom and clarity she offers. 

 

Before I started my whole journey trying to figure out the concept of personal happiness and well-being and what it meant for *me* and how it fit into my life, I had a very “commercial” idea of what joy was. Joy was Disney, joy was laughter, joy was happy friends chatting over coffee, joy was bright sunshine and fresh cut flowers in a pretty vase.

I really thought the feeling of joy was a constant state of mind, sort of like some sort of fluid, flowing, stream that ran continuously and smoothly. I truly believed that if I could just figure out how to step into that “stream” of joy, I would be set for life. I really believed with my whole heart that being joyful was just a state of being, something that you either were or weren’t, sort of like being a vegetarian or being a parent. You either were joyful or you weren’t and that was all there was to it.

I really thought if I could figure out the necessary steps, I could achieve this mysterious and consistent “joy” that people spoke of- I could just immerse myself in some sort of joyful state of mine and stay there forever.

After several years of research into both the hard science and spiritual side of what joy is, I finally understood what so many have know for so long- joy is NOT a constant thing. Joy is NOT something fluid that can be tapped into if only you know the right way to do it.

Joy is NOT a state of being or a state of mind.

Joy is, instead, sort of like an event. It’s something you discover with regular and repeated searching. It’s something that takes conscious focus and energy.

After thinking about it and thinking about it, I realized that finding “joy” in the midst of our lives is sort of like stargazing.

Let me explain…

Let’s say you are going stargazing. As you step out into the darkness of the night, things can be a little confusing and frustrating. Maybe you don’t trust the dark, maybe some old fears come up to the surface while you’re stumbling around down the porch steps, and feeling your bare feet sink into the dewy soft grass of the lawn. As you stand there in the dark, trying to orient yourself a bit, you think about heading back inside because there are very creepy bugs on the lawn and who knows what is going on at this time of night and it’s really dark and quiet and there’s some weird rustling coming from the tree nearby…

But if you’re determined to see the stars, you have to do your best to adapt to this dark environment. You have to just trust that where you are standing is okay and you will be safe there, at least for a while. So you take a few minutes to get used to the darkness, to let your eyes adapt.

And once you get yourself situated and you feel a little stable, *then* you go ahead look up to the dark sky. It’s daunting, because at first you see nothing. In fact, you feel almost like you are being sucked up into the dark nothingness.

But you know that even though there doesn’t appear to be anything but an inky blackness above you, you have to be patient and trust that the night sky will reveal itself.

After a while (and it can sometimes seem like an overwhelming amount of time…), you *finally* see a pinpoint of light. At first, you’re not sure if it’s a plane or maybe a light flashing off a high building. Even if you are pretty sure you know what it is, you don’t trust yourself at first. Is it a star?

But, lo and behold, it turns out to be a star. It’s small, and maybe it’s dim, but it makes itself known to you in its subtle, quiet way. And it’s something you can use as a guide, and someplace you can rest your gaze and sort of settle into.

After a while, you scan the skies once again, finally beginning to believe that there’s more out there than just the black dome of the night sky. And as you stand still in the dark, the stars begin to reveal themselves to you, one by one.

The stars grow brighter and more intense. More of them appear, and as you make out the constellations, you begin to see more and more of the universal tissue that connects each one. You start to see *so* many stars and they make themselves know so very quickly that you can’t keep track.

After a while, the stars are really all you can see. The darkness still exists, and it still claims a huge, vast majority of the sky, but the stars are all your eyes can focus on. And you keep finding more and more. The stars twinkle and shine their lights down upon you. The once jet-black sky has slowly revealed itself to be an amazing show of lights, and the longer you stare at it, the brighter and more illuminated the lights become. The constellations slowly shift and cross the sky, and you just watch in wonder.

Even though this bright, shining sky seems to be completely different than the matte, low black expanse that first appeared to you, it’s the same exact sky. The difference is that you adjusted your vision just a tiny bit. It took patience, and time, and even the process of facing a few fears along the way, but the sky came alive. By giving yourself the time to adjust to the dark, and waiting patiently for just one star to sparkle for you, you wound up revealing an entire sky full of starlight.

And this sky is available to you every night, you just need to give yourself the time and patience to adapt, wait, and scan over and over again until you know exactly what you are looking for.

There is this misconception that “joy” is like the noontime sun; it should be bright, warm, and illuminate every single part of our lives. I’ve always had the misconception that the feeling of joy would be so intense that it couldn’t help but be noticed constantly and affect everything. It should be something that is instantly recognizable, and should not require any sort of shift in perception to point out exactly what and where it is.

The truth is that “joy” is more like the stars in the night sky. Even when we can’t see the joy in our lives, it is there. If we’re too busy looking forward or looking backwards, looking down, or focusing on one single point, the joy can sometimes fade into the darkness of our daily lives. But when we practice new ways of looking, finding the joy in life is just like watching the night sky reveal itself, star by star; pinpoints of light connecting together to form a giant, twinkling tapestry of beauty.

The one thing we can do to find more joy more joy in our lives is to simply DEFINE more joy in our lives. Just find that one little star and go from there. What makes you happy? What tiny thing in your life right now is a dim first star that you can use as a starting point? What little pinpoint of light in your life might be the first step towards opening up an entire sky of starlight?