What’s Your Joy Place?
Photo Credit: Emily Giacomini; Algarve, Portugal
What’s the place that brings you joy? Maybe it’s somewhere you can sit and rest and feel completely at peace, untroubled by the world and its challenges. You could be there alone or with people you care about, those who are able to join you in silence and rest, without feeling a need to converse.
Or perhaps it’s a piece of music that floods your soul with gladness and lifts your spirit to soar to heights your earthly body can’t reach. Or maybe it’s even spinning in a dance that has you completely engaged, holding all of your attention, distracting you from the everyday routine and the demands of problem-solving your way through life.
For me one of those places is on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal. The panorama spreads beyond 180 degrees in a vast expanse of deep blue with streaks of green and black as the water pulses against the towering rock face. Seagulls drift on the airstreams, swooping down and rising up effortlessly. Tiny birds chirp and come to rest in the scraggly bushes along the top of the cliff. The light shows are incredible with the sunrise. Every day it’s different. On clear days the luminescent bulb juts above the straight line of the horizon. On slightly cloudy days, as on Christmas Day recently, the sun took longer to make its appearance and it was subtle, spotlighting patches of the ocean in brilliant light while visible rays streaked out over a distance of miles along the horizon, with the scene changing every few seconds for long, timeless minutes, until the sun rose high enough to bypass the clouds and break through in all its fulness.
How can you find your joy place? Take a few minutes of quiet to yourself. Give yourself permission to decompress, then reflect on when you’ve felt most at peace, whether recently or long ago. Sit in the memory. What was the temperature like? What did you see? What smells were there, if any? What did you hear? What did you feel on your skin? Was it breezy, cool, warm? If you were standing, what was under your feet? What did you taste? Perhaps salt on your tongue, if you were near the ocean? Or even a fresh gulp of water if you were at a natural mountain spring? Who was with you?
Reliving our joyful memories can bring a sense of peace even if we’re remembering them from a world away. As we enter the New Year let us move forward in the peaceful blessing of our place of joy.