Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy. Milton Erickson, M.D.
One of the servers in a restaurant the other day was talking with me about the new year and her hopes for it. She said she wasn't making any resolutions, because they don't work for her. Among other things, I said, maybe we are to try to find happiness in our life just as it is, as best we can. (Which is, of course, sometimes easier said than done.)
This quote reminds me of that.
Have you ever known anyone who is a joy-sucker? If there is any joy in a situation, a person like this can manage to wring it out, leaving you feeling worse and having something else to deal with. I try to limit my time with someone like this, as much as possible. It brings me down too far.
It's so much better consciously to be a joy-bringer, a creator of joy, so that others will be glad you are around.
It's too much to say we can do this all the time. But creating joy, to me, is a big part of it -- finding something that makes us happy, then doing it or bringing it into our life; or being like the child who finds treasures of joy along the sidewalk vs. being in such a hurry to get somewhere that we can be oblivious to the good around us.
It's not for nothing that it is said to stop and smell the flowers along the way.
Karin
Originally posted 2007-01-15 13:39:45.
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A friend sent this:
>>Nice. I liked the Erickson quote you used about life bringing us pain on its own and our needing to create joy. Also, I think your thoughts about joy were spot on, in finding it where we are right now. We can both create it and find it.