Choices

Choosing Joy

It’s time for me to ‘fess up.  This ongoing rant called Bonny’s blog is my attempt to become more conscious about my thoughts and actions and how they effect everything around me, and also to gain a community intent on becoming more conscious.  So, if you are following I thank you and if you choose to comment on any blog posting I’m going to get really excited.

On to the thought for this week.  The season of Advent generally is divided into four weeks, each one focusing on one attribute; faith, hope, peace, joy.  In some traditions love replaces one of those words, but in every tradition the fourth Sunday of Advent is about joy.  Faith?  Got it!  Hope?  Plenty of that too.  Peace?  I am at peace with all my family, finally!  So I’m going straight for joy this entire time.

Here is a question I found on a website I was exploring.  (www.lifebyme.com)  “What percentage of your decisions are based on how much joy they will bring you or those you care about?  More than 50%?  Less than 50%?  All of them?”

Well, now, joy?  I live a pretty happy life with many moments of joy, but it has never occurred to me to measure my decisions on the yardstick of joy.  Why ever not?  It makes so much sense!  Suddenly I feel like I’ve been walking around in a fog, shooting from the hip in my decision making, in spite of the fact that I pretty carefully consider every decision I make that’s more important than “what’s for dinner tonight?”

Ahhh; not true.  Way off track here!!  The question, “What’s for dinner tonight?” almost always has my joy or my family’s joy as part of the equation.  As a mom, grandparent, great-grandparent, spouse and enthusiastic cook, food is probably the arena in which I pay most attention to joy.  Oh, and here’s more.  Christmas is approaching and for the first time in twelve years all our children and grandkids will be gathered in the same place for a few days.  Every choice my husband Chris and I have made in the months it took to make this happen have all been about joy.

Another one; last month I used a colored marker to draw stick figures of Chris and myself, labeled with the names our four year old great grand daughter calls us, Nana and Poppi.  We sent it to her with a great big “We love you” at the bottom.  That was all about joy for us, and she has it taped to the wall just above her pillow and reminds us of it when we talk with her on the phone.

One of the things I’ve become more conscious about in this exercise is how quickly I judge myself as being less than adequate in what I do, such as not using a joy yardstick.  But after a couple of days of examining choices over years, I’m showing up firmly in the “over 50%” group.  Now that joy based choices are part of my awareness it will grow quickly.  Take a couple of days for your own self examination and I’ll bet you lunch you will come to the same conclusions.  We are all joy junkies because it’s encoded in our souls.  Let’s not settle for anything less any more.

The critical piece here is the consciousness of making decisions based on joy.  We all do it, but usually it’s automatic and subconscious.  So wake up.  There are lots of roses to smell.  Conscious choice is what brings true power to our lives, and there are no small things, no inconsequential choices.