Choosing Joy Everyday
Choosing joy starts with letting go of the fear we have long been encouraged to live in. Fear of each other, fear of our environment and fear of ourselves.
What are you afraid of?
Is it present, here and now, or does it reside only in our visions of the future or our memories of the past?
The funny thing is, fear does not exist in the present. It exists only in the future and the past.
All that exists in the present is action and reaction.
If there is something to fear in the present, we instinctively react and deal with the situation. No good ever came from worrying about the future or the past, in the present.
We can prepare for the future, organise and plan if we like, but dwelling in fear is detrimental to our development, blocking us from reaching for our goals.
Choosing joy does not mean we have to feel elation 100% of the time. While that might be possible through full detachment, we are here to be human and feel the full spectrum of human emotion.
Sadness, anger, shame and disappointment all stem from fear and are important developmental explorations. The trick is, to be an observer and transform the fear. Go there, experience it, dissect it if we can, process, reflect and move on.
Every emotion we give attention to is an act of creation. We all have the ability to transform negative emotions into positive creations. Fear begets fear, just as joy begets joy, energy begets energy, light begets light.
Choosing joy is about understanding there is joy to be found in every moment if we are willing to look for it. Gratitude and appreciation, of even the simplest joys, creates more joyful appreciation.
When we feed the river of joy inside each of us and bathe in those waters daily, our inner light radiates, beaming out across time and space, intensifying our collective light and banishing the darkness. If we are all floating around with joy in our hearts there is no where for fear to stand.
Shine your light, save the world
My Joy Wei
I have come to understand that the only way we are going to save humanity from our own self destruction is by shining our own lights and combining our powers. Holy saint goodness, it’s the Care Bears, we are the Care Bears yo.
My name is Kaylie Joy Jenkins. I am an artist and I was born with a deep concern for the state of our beautiful world. Worry Wart, my mother called me. I would worry about my family and friends, about who I was and what people thought of me, I worried about the kids in Ethiopia, “how could famine exist, when we have so much abundance?”
I worried about war, I couldn’t fathom how leaders could let that happen. I worried about the children being stolen from their families, trained as soldiers, used as slaves and horrendously abused. “Why doesn’t anyone stop them?” I worried about waste and pollution, “How can we let this go on?” I pleaded with my parents and elders. No one could explain it to me in any way that made sense. It’s just how things are.
In my youth I joined local charities, volunteered and donated to all the good causes, to find out it was unlikely any of my efforts would make any difference. I racked my brain for a solution for years. How could I possibly help fix the world in my lifetime? Even if I became a politician and clawed my way to the top spot, I would likely be corrupt by the time I got there and that’s not me. I’m an artist not a politician.
Fear and doubt were my mantras for a long time. My only solace, a dash of not giving a fuck that seeped in to my teens, but I could never make it stick. I still don’t really know why, but I care. I care a whole damn lot. It gets me out of bed everyday and it drives me forward. I am compelled beyond any other urge to care about people, creatures, trees, rivers, rocks, sunshine, rain, light and shadows. Every little blade of grass swaying in the breese fills my heart with magnificence. Yet, I was lost in the helplessness of a tumbling race losing its grip on the simple, profound beauty of our world. Who am I to fix it?
Just as resignation was setting in, my whole sense of self was rebooted by the birth of my eldest son. Bollocks to who I thought I was. Who do I want to be for him? I stopped looking for outside solutions and turned my attention inwards. I started to peel back the layers of everything I knew or thought I knew about myself and the world around me. I studied anything and everything that crossed my path. I dismantled everything I had ever been shown, to examine what it was made of, where it came from and what its purpose was. I found layer upon layer of fallacies, misguided and convenient untruths.
When I hit the bedrock of my existence and there was nothing there. I realised we are all simply a construction of everything we experience, and therefore, the only thing we have true control over is what we do with those experiences. We can choose how we perceive things and what we transform those perceptions into.
I extracted some of my debilitating beliefs, such as art is not a real job and I am not good enough, lo and behold Joy Wei shimmered out from the darkness. My own bright sparkle, here to add to the light that is growing exponentially as we shine on each other and unveil our bright lights together. Joy is one of those good contagions. All we have to do is nurture our own inner light and infect the world with it. Because if we are all walking around with love and joy beaming bright from our hearts, there simply is nowhere for hate and destruction to exist.
Self development truly is the greatest gift we can give anyone. Discovering our own perfect self expression and embarking on the journey toward mastering it is the path of least resistance to true fulfilment. Choosing joy in every moment is a choice we can make to fill all our lives with the wonder of this magical experience called life.
Choose joy, be the light, grow the light and spread it around. Our salvation really is that simple. Some of my guiding lights include: Alan Watts, Siddhartha, The Alchemist, The Tao, The Celestine Prophecy, Rumi, Ram Das, Ekhart Tolle and Te Hira Kaiwai.
Joy Wei is my perfect self expression, my Ikigai. I get a thrill out of painting old clothes, giving them new life and keeping them out of landfill. Images of abhorrent fashion industry waste fuel my passion for redefining second hand clothing, bringing me so much joy.
What, where and who do you find most Joyful?
What is your Joy Wei?
