Silver tops still wandering

Noun: ‘A feeling of great pleasure and happiness’. The Oxford dictionary says that nouns can be ‘verbed’. A verb is a word that expresses an action, an event or a state. Sentences need verbs. We need ‘joy’. In my world joy is a verb first and a noun last. So there!

As with anything experienced, one persons dalliance with joy and all things joyful will always be subjective. Those spaces in time will be as personal, varied and infinitely as different as the people living them, in that particular moment. In my humble opinion joy is transient and always a unique time, an ‘in the moment’ happening. It can not really be contrived. The best moments are often fallen upon. What is required by us all is the right frame of mind to ‘go with the flow’ and recognise the moments for what they are. Then stop, breathe and let your soul soar.

Not always easy, believe me I know, but it is possible to unclutter our heads of unwanted thoughts and ruminations and replace the void with appreciaation of the sheer wonder of being in the moment and savouring the feelings, the smells, the sounds and the sights that are ever all around us.

My own personal favourite of happy places is being next to the sea. Perhaps because it is where I was born, certainly in sound of the sea if not quite in sight! Or maybe because I have enjoyed and continue to seek adventure in and around any coastline I can find. The rythmic crashing of the waves with the ever present swishing pull back as shingle and the smoothed, rounded stones tumble over each other only to be thrown once again ashore. It is almost as if the oceans are breathing to their own rythm.

For any fellow sea swimmers who are lucky enough to get right ‘out there’ and feel the way the seas move with you and against you as you try to conquer metres and the miles, you soon learm that you too must also find a rythm to settle into and work with the movements as they contrive to help and hinder, working with and againt you as you pull yourself through the water. The pulling and pushing of tides and currents, the rise and fall of the horizon and the transient glances of coastline. Eventually you reach a place of ‘melding’ and  become part of the vastness and all of its’ movements. Joy personified to me, and never the same twice running. It isn’t always a foregone conclusion that a sea swim will acieve this, exactly the same combination of experiences can just as easily make me dizzy and sea sick! The elements are always master and and if you can’t settle into that state of flow and rythm then it is probably too rough, so get out and acceed to Neptune, The Sea and Mother Nature. We are always their guest and as such, not always welcome.

So many things; music, sights, sounds, cherished people, food, drinks, laughter, stories told and retold, experiences shared, places visited, new faces, the feel of sunshine on your back, rain on your face, cooling off in the heat, warming up in the cold, a cheeky chilled white shared with friends, a cup of tea.

Whatever and wherever you find your joy, live it, love it, treasure it and hoard those moments as the special jewels in life that they are. I wish you all joy, always.