“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things” - Robert Brault

I started off small, literally; the first person I asked was my son. I was curious if he’d even understand the question. He did of course. He said the one thing that really brought him joy was having a play date with his best friend. I was happy that the answer did not include one of his many game devices, and also nostalgic that a few years ago the answer would have been having a play date with me. He had the right idea though. What about a play date with my best friend,… well my best friend is my wife. I think my wife and I definitely need a date night and some “out of the house” fun but I work from home so it’s not like we don’t spend time together. My friends on the other hand I’ve seen less and less of over the past years.

I asked my mother-in-law next. Her top picks were fishing and gardening, two very meditative activities. Being such an introvert by nature I think I had undervalued these solo pursuits, but perhaps with no good reason. I thought I did plenty of stuff by myself so I should focus on more social activities instead, but I think back to my comics, my short stories and my sculptures,… those things did bring me joy. And more importantly, at least for me I enjoyed these activities all the more when the end product could be enjoyed by others.

[I discovered the title quote from a Flash movie I stumbled across: http://www.findingjoymovie.com/
its a bit ethereal but it does contain a few good nuggets]

"There happens to be a lot about me that you don't know, Mr. Smarty Man. There's plenty of joy in my life."

What is joy? Or more specifically what is it that fills your soul with joy. What is it that makes you happy? It should be a very easy question to answer but I find I’m at a loss to come up with a good solid list. I have my family, they bring me joy; hearing my daughter giggle, sharing a game with my son or being silly with my wife. These are all good answers to the question, so why pursue it any further?

When faced with this question recently it occurred to me that maybe my list was one sided, maybe my experience of joy is mostly second hand, receiving it from others. I’d always been attracted to people with a playful spirit and contagious happiness (who isn’t), but this topic originated with a deeper discussion with my wife where I discovered she had feelings of loneliness and more importantly joylessness, which is contrary to her nature. I started to realize that I wasn’t bringing any joy into the household. I could draw it from my family, but what was I giving back. What I needed was to be able to generate joy, to fill myself to the point that I could radiate that contagious happiness,… which, unfortunately is contrary to my nature.

And so, lacking natural optimism I set forth to discover how to find my joy,… by asking everyone else this very question; what brings you joy?