Hints Of Gladness: Discovering Joy Again

Hi,

And welcome.

I'm Rod Janz,

A coach and a certified spiritual director and retreat leader.

Welcome to an invitation to joy.

This reflection comes from my journey,

A 30-day practice where I began noticing what I called hints of gladness on my morning walks.

That phrase might seem familiar to you and I'll explain it in just a sec.

That simple act of paying attention produced a shift in me.

I became more naturally joyful,

Not because life got easier,

But because I learned to see what was already good.

As you listen,

I invite you to slow down,

Breathe,

And open yourself to the possibility that joy is already here,

Just waiting for you to notice.

Thich Nhat Hanh once said,

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,

But sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

He also reminded us,

We have everything we need to be happy right now.

There's no need to run outside for anything.

Happiness is available in this very moment.

Joy is already within us.

It's not something we have to chase or earn.

It reveals itself when we slow down,

Breathe,

And become fully present.

This awareness is what I want to invite you into during this reflection.

Take a moment to let your body settle.

If you're walking,

Slow your pace just a little.

If you're sitting,

Feel your feet on the ground and your breath moving in and out.

Relax your shoulders,

Relax your chest,

And particularly the area around your heart.

For me,

Joy hasn't been something that came easily.

For a long time I thought joy was something that happened when everything was going well,

When life happened the way I wanted it to.

I still fall into this trap.

So this reflection is a helpful reminder for me too.

I've come to see that joy isn't about everything being right.

It's about how we choose to meet life,

Even when it's not perfect.

As I mentioned off the top a few years ago,

I decided to do a 30-day experiment.

Each morning I went for a walk and paid attention to what I called hints of gladness.

It's kind of a long story at how I arrived at doing this self-directed exercise,

So I won't go into it.

But it came out of reflecting on one of Mary Oliver's most well-known poems,

When I Am Among the Trees.

To give you some context,

The line in the poem is,

When I am among the trees,

Especially the willows and the honey locust,

Equally the beech,

The oaks,

And the pines,

They give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me,

And daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

In which I have goodness and discernment,

And never hurry through the world,

But walk slowly and bow often.

That phrase,

Hints of gladness,

Came to me out of a longing,

A desire to reconnect with a deeper sense of joy.

I wasn't depressed exactly,

Just caught in a loop and negative way of seeing things.

I sounded a bit like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh,

Always expecting the cloud instead of the sunlight.

I didn't have much hope or belief in myself at the time,

And honestly thought I just wasn't meant to be a joyful person.

I'm not quite sure how I came up with this,

But I thought what if I simply looked for small good things every morning,

Things that made me smile,

Pause,

Or feel grateful.

I didn't know it at the time,

But that small practice would create a shift.

At first,

I found it awkward.

I'd walk and think,

What am I supposed to notice?

I was trying a little too hard,

But slowly something began to shift.

One morning I noticed the way the sunlight streamed through the trees and the leaves.

Another morning,

It was birdsong.

I really love birdsong,

Especially when it re-emerges in the spring.

Another time it was a fellow walker's wave,

Or the smell of the ocean beside the trail that I get to walk on each morning.

These were such seemingly ordinary things,

Yet when I paid attention,

They opened something in me.

By the end of that month,

I realized I was becoming more joyful.

And it surprised me.

Not because anything big had changed,

But because I had changed.

I had become more open,

More awake,

More present to the goodness that was already there.

Looking back,

I can see that I was a little misguided.

I thought I lacked joy,

That it was something outside of me,

And that I had to go find.

But I see now that joy was never missing.

I had just forgotten how to get in touch with it.

Anthony DeMello once said,

You're not lacking anything,

You already have it all.

You just don't see it.

Awareness was everything to DeMello.

If you haven't done so,

He's well worth the read.

He'll help you get reprogrammed for happiness and joy.

This practice revealed to me that joy wasn't something I had to earn or build.

It's my nature.

It's who I am beneath the noise,

The worry,

And the striving.

That's what I mean when I say that joy isn't something we chase.

It's something we grow into by noticing what's already here.

We live in a world that tells us joy is something to earn,

Something to buy,

Achieve,

Or wait for.

But joy doesn't depend on perfect circumstances.

It grows out of presence.

It grows when we stop running long enough to see what's right in front of us.

Joy,

I found,

Is quieter than happiness.

It's not loud or flashy.

It's often subtle.

A small pulse of gratitude.

A little bit of light.

A soft smile.

A sense of being at home in your own skin.

And the beautiful thing is,

Joy tends to multiply when we notice it.

The more I paid attention to these moments of gladness,

The more they seemed to show up.

Or maybe they'd always been there,

Waiting for me to notice.

If you'd like,

Take a moment now to try this practice yourself.

Again,

Let your body settle.

Relax your shoulders.

Relax your chest.

Take a slow,

Conscious breath in.

And a slow,

Conscious breath out.

Gently ask yourself,

Where have I noticed delight in my life recently?

What small joy brought me gratitude?

When something emerges,

Smile if you'd like.

Simply allow whatever arises to come forward and rest in it.

Pretty simple,

Hey?

This quiet noticing,

This pause,

Is where joy lives.

It's not forced.

It's not loud.

It's simply the awareness that life is here,

Offering itself to you,

All the time,

Everywhere you go,

In almost every circumstance.

You don't have to do anything more than this.

Just notice and let that be enough.

During my 30-day exercise,

Not every morning was peaceful.

Some days I was tired or preoccupied.

I don't know about you,

But I get preoccupied and distracted a lot.

Or maybe I was sad or feeling a little bit depressed.

But even then,

If I looked closely,

There was always something.

A dog running freely.

Clouds in the sky.

Children walking with their parents or being walked by their parents.

Joy and sorrow aren't opposites.

They often coexist.

Sometimes it's the ache itself that opens our hearts enough to let joy in.

As you practice noticing,

Try not to force anything.

Don't go searching for joy.

Let it come to you.

You might begin by asking a gentle question.

What is quietly good right now?

Or,

As we asked earlier,

What is something that's bringing me delight?

Let the answer emerge.

And again,

Smile if you want to.

Smiling is good for you.

Then wait,

Listen.

Look around.

There might be a sound,

A color,

A moment of stillness.

You'll feel it when it lands or when it emerges.

That small lift or shift inside.

That's a hint of gladness.

The more we recognize these moments,

The more our perspective changes.

Life doesn't feel as flat or rushed.

Gratitude begins to soften the edges of worry and our judgment.

Before long,

Joy becomes less about what's happening and more about what we're seeing and how we're seeing.

That's what I mean by living joyfully.

It's not pretending life is easy.

It's staying open to goodness,

Even when things are hard or difficult.

If you practice this long enough,

Something beautiful happens.

You start to become more naturally joyful.

The kind of joy that doesn't depend on the weather,

Your bank account,

Or what other people think.

It becomes intrinsic.

It begins to flow from within.

When that happens,

Life feels different.

You start to trust even on difficult days.

Joy is still there,

Waiting to be noticed.

So today,

Wherever you are,

Walking or driving,

Sitting quietly,

Take a moment to look around.

Notice one thing that brings you even the smallest hint of gladness.

Joy doesn't need to be spectacular.

It only needs to be seen.

As you move through your day,

Remember that joy isn't something you have to go looking for.

It's already here,

Woven into the ordinary fabric of life,

Waiting for you to pause,

Notice,

And say yes.

That's the invitation,

The invitation to joy.

If you'd like to take this reflection a little deeper,

Here are three questions to sit with or write about.

What small,

Specific things bring you a sense of gladness in your everyday life?

When was the last time you felt naturally joyful without trying to make it happen?

What allowed that feeling to arise?

What might help you pause and notice more often throughout your day?

I'll read those one more time.

What small,

Specific things bring you a sense of gladness in your everyday life?

When was the last time you felt naturally joyful without trying to make it happen?

What allowed that feeling to arise?

What might help you pause and notice more often throughout your day?

May you remember that joy has never left you.

May you notice its quiet presence in the ordinary moments of your life.

And may that awareness open your heart to the deep gladness that has always been your nature.

Thank you for listening to this reflection.

Take good care.