In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Degrees of Joy
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
“And then there are the quieter forms of joy: the kind of deeply felt satisfaction of mastering a difficult skill, creating something beautiful, having an especially meaningful conversation, or doing something we love so completely that we lose all awareness of time. … They make us feel intensely alive [and] when we feel intensely alive, we connect with our deepest selves.” Dr. Mardy Grothe (see Of Interest)
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.” Joseph Campbell
Degrees of Joy
This is a last-minute post precipitated by Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week.
As often happens, Mardy’s post caused me to Think, this time about the degrees of joy.
Yes, degrees.
I’m a lucky guy. In my life, Joy comes in two versions: Standard and Pure.
Standard joy—for example, a perfect sunset; a gentle breeze that carries the scent of white-thorn acacia flowers; or being immersed in a story as a reader, racing along with the characters and experiencing the events of the story as they unfold around you—might be flawed in an instant by a jetliner’s contrail; the faint scent of a skunk; or the smell of smoke, indicating your house is on fire.
Pure Joy is being immersed in a story as a writer—racing along with the characters as the story events unfold and recording those events and the characters’ reactions to them—and to hell with the smell of smoke.
Mardy’s post also gave rise to another entry in my own weird little dictionary, which I started compiling after I first encountered and read The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce a few decades ago:
sanctuary, n. “A safe, sacred space where we never consider even the possibility of ambush, so that when the attack comes, it has the most devastating effect.”
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Finding Joy