Meditation on Joy

It has been a pretty good week, I'm not normally a fan of Amsterdam in the winter and January is the cruellest month. Still, we had three consecutive sunny days. each started with a cool fog, with the feeling of isolation and mystery, but this fog soon burnt off into beautiful winter sunshine, I felt briefly blessed!

One of the things I like about my new job is that they have been organising lunchtime meditation sessions, which works surprisingly well even though we are back on zoom? The meditations are well-led, focusing on traditional mindfulness plus acceptance of mental state i.e. whether you are feeling up or down, feeling focused or unfocused…  this week we had introduced the theme of meditating on joy i.e. focusing on joyful moments and focusing on positive memories moments and feelings. 

This wasn't easy at first, but it was a well lead session and after a few slightly uncomfortable minutes, I was surprised at how many genuinely joyful moments I was able to bring to mind, after a bit of searching. Then it occurred to me how often my thoughts get tangled up in all the problems, tensions and petty arguments which can trick to unpick and step away.

I have a Facebook friend Geoff: a nice guy, a very distant relative but also my only openly gay relative. He has been running a series called "Moments of Pleasure". His last post in this series was on Dec-31 "Moment of Pleasure No. 565: New Year Fireworks". Although I don't exactly share Jeff's taste, sometimes I'm 100% behind his choices e.g. "Moment of Pleasure No. 519: Julie Walters" (one of my favourite actresses) and his posts are nearly always good fun and thought-provoking in a light-hearted way. 

Anyway getting back to my own Meditation on Joy, while I have the normal friends, family, pets, travel, exciting news moments of joy, which were suggested in the meditation, one extra and common source of joy for myself is discovering a good story and/or writer, typically either a new novel or revisiting an old story and finding something new. Sometimes when I revisit an old favourite, I find that I have forgotten just how much I like this story and sometimes it can be even better on revisiting.

In recent years, especially since covid I've found myself spending more time in novels, either reading the original or listening to an audiobook version and sometimes listening to a dramatisation. I'm a big fan of BBC Radio Play, I've just finished the DH Lawrence collection which was joy itself. In my 20s and 30s, I was very keen on DH Lawrence and read many of his major novels plus The Virgin and The Gypsy which is one of my favourites, along with "Women in Love", I'm less keen on "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" (a bit of a let down for me).

Now I'm in my 50s I prefer EM Forster over DH Lawrence but they are both great writers and joy to read.

meditate | ˈmɛdɪteɪt | verb [no object] focus one's mind for a period of time, in silence or with the aid of chanting, for religious or spiritual purposes or as a method of relaxation: I set aside time every day to write and meditate | it was here that the monk spent much of the day reading and meditating on Scripture.

joy | dʒɔɪ | noun [mass noun] a feeling of great pleasure and happiness: tears of joy | the joy of being alive. • [count noun] a thing that causes joy: the joys of country living.

novel1 | ˈnɒv(ə)l | noun a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism: the novels of Jane Austen | a paperback novel.