Dear Writer,
There are many things in life that we once loved that, eventually, we don’t love anymore. They can be favorite stories that don’t hold up that well as we grow and learn. A pair of jeans that we once thought looked so cool and now we’re like, “Low rise bootcut? What was I thinking?” Sometimes, they can even be a person.
Rediscovering the joy in a thing is a process. It’s work, and it can be elusive at times. You’ll feel a quick hit of that old joy and think it’s back, but when you turn around expecting to see it there, all you see is its retreating backside as it runs from you. But sometimes, the chased joy, when you find it, when you capture it, can be richer than the easily-caught kind you used to have.
I feel this evolution in my own rediscovery. The joy that used to come to me so easily is more elusive now, because I’ve mapped more of my own internal landscape, giving my joy more places to hide. There were areas I wouldn’t go into in the old days, for fear of what I might find there. When I finally explored those places, there was a darkness there that I could no longer ignore, and it has touched my joy. Not corrupted it, exactly, but deepened it, given it more nuance. My joy has aged, and it’s not as quick to come to my side as it used to be, but when it shows up, it brings more depth with it, and we can sit together in silence and just be.
It’s not that I don’t have access to my joy. It’s that I expect it to be something it used to be, so when it shows up, I sometimes take a while to recognize it for what it is.
Things change.
I say, let them.
Everything,
L