Build On Joy, Hot Damn!

Build On Joy, Hot Damn!

Hello My Beauties,

My girlfriend and I have been talking a lot lately about how grateful we are. We are at a place in our lives where things are good at work, we are healthy and getting healthier every day, our personal lives rock, and we like ourselves and enjoy being alone and with our family and friends. We’re good, ya know?

So, at one of our staff meetings (we’re teachers,) someone commented that we should build on joy. And I went, aha! that is a blog title ~ of course, I’m the one who added the hot damn because it is such a phenomenal concept. What if we start everything, and I mean every thing we do with the intent of building… growing… cultivating joy? Can you imagine if we all did this how the world would change?

I’ve been thinking about our dog, Wilson. Stay with me, there is a connection. Dogs are bundles of joy, unconditional, tail wagging, arrroooooing, slobbery kisses joy. I can leave my desk to use the rest room and he’s sound asleep, but he’s there to greet me the second I open the bathroom door and it’s like, Where’ve you been? I’ve missed you! tail wagging and oh, sooo happy to see my face. It’s the coolest thing, to be loved so. Then there is his joy in his stuffed “friends” ~ he has Pinkie, and Big Puppy, and Puppy, and Rudolph, and Rocky the Raccoon, and Monkey, a squeaky toy, and several tennis balls. Sometimes out of nowhere, I’ll hear this noise and look over to find him with one of his friends in his mouth, shaking it back and forth, running from one room to another like he is 2 years old instead of nearly 14. And when he rediscovers his ball? Too funny, his head held at an impossibly awkward angle, gnawing on that sucker like there’s no tomorrow. He is sooo present, sooo happy; it makes you laugh just because you can. What a gift.

So, building joy… what have you done lately just because you can, because it makes you feel good, because it makes you laugh? When was the last time you laughed? How about the belly rolling laugh that has tears streaming down your face? When I was a kid, this was fairly regular. My BFF and I would laugh at the stupidest, and I mean the stupidest things… a spoon, really? I think it flipped over or fell off something, I can’t even remember, but we laughed till tears streamed down our cheeks and we had to hold our stomachs because they hurt so much and we couldn’t breathe we were laughing so hard. I watched Melissa McCarthy in her movie, Spy, and about peed my pants laughing, so it hasn’t been that long. But still, isn’t this something we should (and I say should with love, no guilt dumping) do more often? Let’s start now.

What makes you grin? Giggle? Guffaw? Think about it, and then do it ~ watch that movie, talk to your girl/boy friend and share old memories that make you do all of the above. Roll on the floor with your pooch and talk to him/her as if he/she is the best thing in the world ~ because they are, in that moment, they are. Treasure the laughter, build the joy, cultivate it. There is sooo much in this world that is hard and hateful and horrible, don’t let it damp down the spark that is joy. Do everything in your power to make joy count. If you don’t, who will?

Dogs help, friends too, comedies that throw out a raunchy moment just to get your goose… whatever it takes, do it. And then do it again and again and again until you have a treasure trove of moments that will sustain you through the shit we sometimes get to slug through, or the dog pooh we get to pick up.

The hot damn part? I’m just that way, goofy and giggly, and raunchy in my own mind (mostly,) and I know a good thing when it hits me.

So, start with joy and build on it, and create your own, Hot Damn!

Love and Light, Grace and Ease.

Blessings,

Shannon