The world is a complicated place. This is most evident in an urban environment, which densely houses a myriad of lives, thoughts, contemplations, and associated neuroses.
From my side, I’ve lived in a big city for the last six years. It’s convenient, sure, but if not for nearby green spaces, I’d consider it sufficiently hellish. All the people, noise, conflicts of space, ethics, and finances: yes, an impressive window looking onto the variables of life, but possibly taken at the price of peace of mind.
I’ve unfortunately never been able to subscribe to a conventional way of living. This isn’t to say I’m above or below a more mainstream existence; I’m just programmed to act as contrarily as possible, possibly because I feel bored mimicking what I’ve already observed.
Accordingly, I’m often left bemused at modern city life, whether it be the physical environment, what I consider the trivial troubles of people who cannot contemplate their privilege, and the foolishness of the consume-produce paradigm which, for me, I equate to a soul-corroding acid.
Wow, an educated, employed city-dweller whining about privilege… stop reading. You could – hell, I might even do so – but I’m not blind to the gorgeous humor of dramatic irony. Yes, city life isn’t perfect, but what version of life is? Well, an answer might lie in the details.
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Joy. Three letters: J O Y. A feeling of profound excitement at the realization of the preciousness of life. I feel it; you feel it; we all feel it from time to time. It exists in almost everything, if you’re willing to look past yourself to see it.
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Whether we realize it or not, the pace of city life often excludes us from ourselves. We get trapped in existing rather than living in order to pay housing costs, food costs, and other apparent social costs that exist to round out the idea of modern existence.
By wholly subscribing to the idea of modern city life, we become disconnected from the little things that make us human. In dousing these metaphoric golden embers of being, we mire ourselves in unwanted routines and end up believing that we need to subscribe to an order outside of ourselves to validate that which we are.
This is where Joy comes into play. It exists; we know that from childhood. It lives; we experience it regularly enough (no matter how fleeting). And Joy is everywhere, if we can somehow manage our respective speeds to better acclimate to its frequency.
So, how do we reintroduce Joy into our lives? Instill it as a core pivot around which we perceive the world? With age, people need to re-set their focus on Joy. Yes, this may seem frightfully contradictory because Joy flowed so naturally in childhood. But, as a child, you also didn’t have to worry about paying taxes, relationship issues, and money problems. People must also face the reality that life is hard, and, as with aching bones, needing to stretch, and the reality of wrinkles, WORK is required to achieve and sustain Joy rather than denying its absence via material purchases that offer only superficial solace from our shared sense of lost innocence.
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Is it irresponsible to think this way? Is it reckless to consider personal joy as a high-level priority when so much injustice appears to be flooding the world? For me, absolutely. How many of us peace-loving, family-oriented folk are responsible for the atrocious actions perpetrated by a psychopathic minority whom we try desperately to usurp while simultaneously trying to hold on to reasons not to kill ourselves?
Yes, in the face of stacked odds, the selfishness of retaining personal joys – joys that uplift, joys that grow, joys that inform and propagate and water the garden of life – are essential. If not, we as individuals and societies are doomed to repeat the mistakes of successive leaders who have given birth to the unbelievably awful circumstances that are currently scrawling blood over the pages of our living history.
Joy lives, despite incessant whisperings of doom. Amidst the concrete and meetings and fears and bills, it breathes. Do not forget that. The quality of your life – the lives of all you come into contact with – depends on you making peace with Joy.