Finding Joy
I’m finding that joy is a bit difficult for me to hold down, so I asked for help in locating her. Cause she is harder to locate than finding fuckin Nemo at this point….
I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a vast ocean. Waves gently lapping as the sun shined overhead with scattered clouds lingering in the distance. Looking over to my right I see a long wooden table, beautiful to behold.
Decorated with food, drinks, flowers, and white linen. Chairs with cushions that sparkled. I sat down at an open seat, and that is when I finally noticed the people gathered all around.
Somehow I know this is a celebration for me. Celebrating me daring to dig and uncover what life and living actually means to me. And to get here it took more personal strength rooted in my willingness to go in and be vulnerable with myself.
To strip away the high rigged walls I had put around me in order to survive and make it in a world that demands you give up your humanity for productivity. Because THAT is how we measure success.
Then I looked across the table and saw my dad. Old but young, all tiredness removed from his face. He finally looked rested, and at peace. It was then I lost it and tears buried so deep I did not know they were still there came to the surface.
I was at a table of my ancestors, celebrating me, and I realized I did not know how to be.
Be in joy and love that was about me.
This was the lesson they were showing me. As the tears and hotness continued to pour from me, a maternal hand reached out and lead me to the water where the other women in white were.
Standing at the waters edge, I bent over and threw up black gunk from my insides. As the sludge made its way out of me, the women poured water over me.
“It’s time for a bath” is the last thing I heard as the chime on my meditation app binged. Deepak Chopra’s voice coming back gently to remind me that it was “time to release the mantra” and bring my awareness back to my body….
I’ll be honest, the past 5 years have been hard. Oscillating between job transitions, big family moves, parent illnesses, friendship betrayals, and health issues I’ve felt like I’ve barely keeping my head above water.
But you would never know it for the most part if you worked with me, or even called yourself my friend.
Why? Because I had trained myself to keep going. The antidote to all of this was always simple…more work. And the work allowed me to stuff the feelings down and hide them away in places so secure I forgot they were hidden. Because when I did try and reach out — to a friend, a co-worker, hell even my mother — I was met with a constant narrative to just…keep…going.
It will eventually be better.
Will it?
That is literally what I been asking myself since 2018. Each move was suppose to be “the better.” And each time that better ended up being more of the same old, just with higher and higher costs of living. And even higher tolls taken on my health and personal relationships.
And being even more honest, this last round almost killed me. A shitty job that had been falsely advertised to me by a spineless boss, who would later leave me hanging out to dry, helped lead me into a deeply painful but illuminating realization that I was truly tired in my soul and no longer wanted to play the plantation politics game of higher education. So I guess I can also say thank you to that shitty boss(es)— may they all reap what they have sown.
But see, being a little over half a year out from my work departure has left me even more vulnerable and exposed…to myself, because all that work had covered up even deeper shit I had been protecting myself from exploring. Unsure of where to start, really.
Re-reading my other Medium articles, I can see the veneer of academic formulation was still hanging strong on my bones as I struggled through embodying what it really means to LIVE. All I have known, and been taught since my first breathe on this Earth, is how to survive.
Survive in a racial capitalist system that says you are only as good, only have worth or value, but what you do.
And I learned you survive by working.
And working some more.
And when you are done with work the second or third job begins, and that is even before you hit your home.
Cause again, your sense of self is so tied into what you do you have to always be reminded because it is so external to you. It’s an addiction you must fix, must satiate, because everyone is hooked. Therefore it is all you know….until you don’t.
With no task lists or fires to put out, no syllabi to re-do once again as the department decides if my new course is “rigorous” enough for their “prestigious department”, no gossip to keep up on so I know who to go to for what — I was left with just myself.
Me, myself and I.
And the meaning of life became my own to (re)define when I removed the one thing that was causing me to both not fully live AND was the only thing I lived for.
That last sentence is what hurt the most when I sat with it and let the emotions wash over me because…what was my purpose then if not to work, if purpose did not automatically mean work/a job? If my personality, my sense of self was wrapped up in survival— who am I if I am sitting in the energy of thriving? Who I am outside the pain of surviving?
My ancestors gave me a gift by helping me to answer those questions during my meditation. I had been throwing up black gunk during my time with them since I had given myself a spiritual bath at the Aquarius New Moon and committed to walking in my highest truth so I can live a spirit and creative led life.
But then I added…I don’t really know what that means and looks like, but I’m game to learn. Cause the other shit didn’t work the past 30+ years.
(SIDENOTE: I really understand now when they say be careful about what you pray for cause WHEW…anyway….)
I am slowly embodying the facts that I am not what I do. I am not what I produce.
I have always known that.
But, because it did not fit well in the spaces and places I was in I let me survival instincts (hello Scopio Rising) take over and put up a barrier so strong I unintentionally locked myself in, instead of keeping those who ain’t shit out.
This is how the hegemony repeats itself on an individual level, and we end up perpetuating our own oppression in order to survive in an increasingly violent and oppressive system.
To find out what living means to me I have find out what I like. Which means I have to find my joy — and it’s been a long time since I have felt and sat in that high vibrational energy for sustainable periods of time.
As Mariah would say, I don’t know her (well).
So my people are giving me glimpses, helping me do that deep excavation type work in a place I can be free and let loose to be more authentically me — the meditation state. They are helping me find my joy by showing me the different sides of me, delving into spaces where joy and pleasure resides so I can uncover more of what living and love are for me.
And it ain’t as easy as it sounds because it means I am doing this next leg of life truly solo.
No template.
No clear pathway.
No predetermined route of promotion for whatever.
This time it’s training wheels off and I am seeing if I can take all the shit I have learned and experienced in the last stages of life and turn that knowledge into some wisdom so I can figure out what it means to live going forward. So I can figure out what is and brings me joy.
I am seeing it is harder than finding Nemo, but worth it as it is helping me find me in the present moment. Helping me understand what it means to BE in the present moment, and not 5 years ahead planning.
I hope the black sludge stops though in my mediations..just sayin…
For contemplation (if you want):
What brings you joy? Do you know what that feeling feels like in your body? If not that is okay, now you have a place to explore. If you do, then I invite you to engage in a conversation with your joy some more to see how it can be sustained?
As you do this just note it may not always lead you to “happy” places — do not assume you know what your joy will tell you. Allow it to speak TO YOU, and listen, believe what it says.
Let me know what you find!
