photo credit: ed siasoco
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the way in which as adults we sometimes lose the sense of unadulterated joy that most of us were lucky enough to have as children.
I asked how we might regain it.
Reading through your comments and emails, I was struck by one theme that kept on coming through: get out of your head and into your body. Here are ten of your suggestions:
- Play with children.
- Allow yourself to weep aloud, don’t hold back. This sets free glorious rejoicing.
- Spend time in nature.
- Dance.
- Sing.
- Run or hike.
- Share community meals.
- Make scarecrows.
- Play tag with a dog.
- Paint prayers and hide them in jars around the property.
Aren’t these wonderful suggestions? Let’s all be joyful this week!
Those are really good suggestions! I really like the number one, play with the children…Sometimes I really do it even im a bit old…
Hi Adrienne, thanks!
Tess, your posts are always inspiring, your blog a joy in itself. A recent story also. Long ago, living alone in NYC, I began consulting the I Ching. And there was a delightful Chinese notions shop in Greenwich Village, where you could buy laughing buddhas, chopsticks, jewelry, ink sticks, silk scarves, etc. But also old coins, the type with a square hole in the middle, used to consult the I Ching. So I bought three of them one day, though the Chinese woman who sold them to me, made sure I was using them for the I Ching, otherwise she said, she wouldn’t sell to me — that seemed so curious, and still does. But so I tossed those coins over and over for literally hundreds of readings during a long period of time, in fact up until about four years ago, when I somehow misplaced them in my apartment. I hunted everywhere a number of times, but couldn’t locate where I had stashed them. Well, I was vacuuming, recently, and pulled out a heavy chest of drawers that sits in the corner of the room, and which has a marble statue on it (the whole thing so heavy I never move it), but there on the oak floor OH WOW, the three coins! I have not yet thrown them to consult the I Ching, I am so in awe just of seeing them in my hand again. A very good omen, though, to say the least.
Sarah, what a delightful story about the I Ching coins. How mysterious that they ended up there. I rather like the added mystery that the woman wouldn’t sell to you without that stipulation.
this is all so true
joy is very hard to cultivate while sitting still
love the photo of the puppy playing in the snow
that is pure joy in an image
Kel recently posted..in the zone