--joy---

I worship a whole lot more than I think about worship.

I think that's how it's supposed to work.

I've been around starstruck people long enough to know that people like to worship. I don't want to overgeneralize, but I know that I personally enjoy focusing on something I perceive as more wonderful than me.

I don't know, I also enjoy focusing on myself quite a bit as well.

But lately I am not enough. I'm really never enough.

C.S. Lewis thought of joy as the desire for something Out There to worship.

This is a more melancholy definition of "joy" than, say, "incessant optimism" or "pleasure in life".

Joy, to me, is not the happiness one derives from eating nachos, although that is a perfectly valid emotion. The eating of nachos by me may happen tonight. (That may be the most ridiculous, not to mention passive, sentence ever to appear on this blog.)

It is not the giddiness I feel when I read Douglas Adams. I just started reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My favorite part so far is the Guide's explanation of Babel fish and how they are used as an argument against the existence of God. You must read Hitchhiker's. I'm not sure why it took this long for me.

Joy, to me, is something incandescent that surprises you and fulfills you regardless of your current circumstances. It's an eye that sees the future and knows that it's good.

I don't know what my life has in store. I waffle back and forth about my "plans" for my future on an hourly basis. But I believe that it will be a joyful adulthood. I believe this because joy is not about what happens to you... joy comes with journeys. It's a fruit... not necessarily an end.

Ghandi once said, "Joy lies in the fight, the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself."

And it's also a propeller. As Helen Keller said (or fingerspelled, I guess), joy is a holy fire that keeps purpose warm.