JOY, NOT HAPPINESS. JOY.
For me, Joy is more important, because it does not depend on everything being idyllic or on having achieved a goal or a dream. Joy is born from oneself, without depending on anything outside.
This Summer, Nuki and I have stayed quietly at home.
When I didn't live by the sea, it was mandatory to travel to a beach place to have the feeling of being on vacation. Now, the truth is that I like the beach more in the months when it is less hot.
Everyone needs to break their routine from time to time, change the scene, but that does not mean having to get on a plane and travel thousands of miles.
New habits, new routines and new sensations can be acquired without moving at all, just by changing the attitude towards everyday things.
It is what I call: looking for sources of income of joy. Simple things like playing with Nuki, cooking food right (for a change hehe, or a new design.
But the most valuable of joys is the one that is born out of Love.
Everything I do for Nuki or with Nuki is with joy and love, as I remember my grandmother did for me. Having Nuki is my way of perpetuating how my grandmother was with everyone and everything. I noticed by chance one day, that Nuki entered the studio and I addressed her in the same way that my grandmother addressed me when I was little:
"Who's coming over there? ... my little treasure"
That is why Nuki is so important to me, because she allows me to love her as I was taught.
How precious it was to walk into a room and be looked at in that way, with that joy on her face every day.
People used to say to my grandmother: "Have they named Treasure the girl?" And she answered: "No, her name is María Gloria, but I call her my treasure."
Because her greatest treasure was her own joy, which was born out of Love.
In this time where the world is literally and figuratively on fire, it is important to live each day intensely. I believe that it is a moral obligation to do things with joy, if life offers us that opportunity. If we have THE CHOICE. Which most people don't have.
This Summer, so many have lost their homes to the fires. The pandemic and wars continue to affect the economy. Autumn is uncertain.
That is why the joy of small things is so important.
It is not easy to project yourself into the future with great ambitions, it never was, but now it would seem like an unconscious attitude, to firmly believe in a planned future, with all the uncertainties that arise every day.
What we can do is visualize each day, the 24 hours ahead of us.
Based on my experience, when I thought in the medium or long term, in the unconsciousness of youth, I did not see all the things that I already had in front of my nose, put there to make me happy. I only focused on what I didn't have. And I'm not talking about material things. I speak of not having someone's love, of not being aware of my qualities or abilities, of not respecting what made me happy or unhappy!
It is very important to know how to protect things, beings and activities that make us happy. No one has the right to take away the sources of income for our joy.
It is the most valuable thing they can steal from us.
The attitude with which we do every little thing, from making the bed in the morning until we go to sleep again, is what adds day after day to our well-being.
Logically, to achieve this, you have to learn to ignore many people and many things.
Learning to ignore is as important as learning to value. ( I am learning).
Knowing what is important and what is not.
And within the things that are important, knowing what has priority.
As this poem that I like so much says, joy must be vindicated.
That is why the next topic of the Open Call will be to create a scarf that transmits joy to whoever wears it.
Silky kisses,
Gloria X.
DEFENCE OF THE JOY
by Mario Benedetti
Defend joy as a trench
defend it from scandal and routine
from misery and miserables
from temporary absences
and from definitive ones.
Defend joy as a principle
defend it from wonder and nightmares
from neutrals and neutrons
from sweet infamies
and serious diagnoses
Defend joy as a flag
defend it from ray and melancholy
from naives and scoundrels
from rhetoric and cardiac attacks
from endemics and academics
Defend joy as a destination
defend it from fire and firefighters
from suicidal and homicidal
from vacations and burdens
from the obligation of being happy.
Defend joy as a certainty
defend it from oxide and dirt
from the famous patina of time
from dew and opportunism
from the pimps of laughter
Defend joy as a Right
defend it from God and Winter
from capital letters and death
from surnames and sorrows
from chance
and from joy itself.
