A Place Of Joy

Steven Behr said “find a place where there is joy and the joy will burn out the pain.” I heard on a TV show, that if you are in trouble with some sad thoughts, you should visualize a happier time and set yourself back into that episode of your life and your unhappy now moments will disappear. Have you ever done this? Here are some examples I have heard about from some readers. One said that she was about to have an operation and she was scared to go to sleep. When she kept thinking about it for the two weeks waiting period before the procedure; she would wish herself away back in Hawaii where she had gone the previous year on a vacation. Of course, that soothed her for a short period of time and then again, she was involved with thinking about the forthcoming hospital visit. She worked up to the last day and when the morning arrived and she was at the hospital waiting her turn to go to the operation room, she made herself visually be back in Hawaii. They wheeled her into the room and as she was being prepped for the anesthesia, she once again put herself in Hawaii and before she knew it, she was awakening and looking around and of course, she was not in Hawaii. However, her conception and fantasy about visiting Hawaii again, had pulled her through the event a bit gentler. She jokingly told the doctor upon realizing it was over, that she had a good time with him in Hawaii and explained all about her imaginary trip there. When I was getting ready to dance in many dance competitions in 1983 in Florida, I was quite nervous about doing it. I would look out and see the others more advanced than me and I would feel like I wanted to run off and out of the room. I did not, I envisioned me walking up to the podium at the conclusion of the event and receiving a trophy for each of the eight dances I was going to dance. That picture in my mind calmed me down and it came true. I did win seven of the eight I danced in and received very nice, large trophies for my efforts. If I had run off, I would not have them now, twenty-nine years later still ‘living’ on my shelves and being dusted off with love every week. Donna from Michigan wrote me a while back that she and her husband tried very hard to have a baby. They did everything available two years ago to make it happen. She use to imagine how the child would look, act and if she would have red hair like Donna’s mom had all her life. When she would see other women in the gynecological office where she was going for checkups, she felt great jealousy when she saw a pregnant woman or many women. She thought about how she would look being pregnant and the clothes she would need and buy and sometimes she would feel so sad, she wanted to run out of the waiting room. One day, all her fantasies paid off and she did need to buy those pieces of clothing because after eight years of envisioning the happy day she would hear the good news that she was pregnant, it happened. Her imaginary thoughts and feelings had come true and she and her husband James were expecting twins. The actual happening was so intense when they first found out, that she felt she was in one of her dreams, but this time it was real. She had found a place where it was joy now and she burned out her pain of waiting, anticipating, being disappointed and jealousy. Now she was in a place of complete happiness and she no longer had to visualize an event happening. She was in the reality of the real happening and so much joy engulfed her, she felt she would burst. As of this time, she is due to give birth the end of August of a boy and a girl. She told me that she and James are dancers and whenever she was disappointed for the month, she and James would go to a social dance and try to forget for several hours, the pain they felt in not being pregnant. She laughingly said in the email note, that they should name the twins Fred and Ginger, because maybe the dancing helped their situation. Her pain of waiting has now turned into the joy of waiting and she has found her place. All of us sometimes have to wait for certain events to occur in our lives. It can be waiting for a new job we want, waiting to take a cruise we have yearned to do for a long time, it can be for someone’s wedding, it can be something we have written to be accepted and published, it can be for watching a beloved television show, it can be for a letter of acceptance to a college. All of these it can be things shape our lives and hopes and if we can wait long enough, sometimes they do happen and give us joy and the joy can be sweeter, because we have had to wait so long. A person I know who finally had her first child at age forty, turned to the people at the party celebration for the birth of her son and said “We have waited so long, and now it is here. We are so blessed.” The look in her eyes and that of her husband said it all. The pain was gone, the joy was ever present and this was a present to both of them. If you are waiting for some joy, be cognizant that it will happen and when it does, as Jackie Gleason, the comedian use to say on his television shows each week “How sweet it is.” We have found the place of joy. elita sohmer clayman