This week I led two funerals. A vibrant, creative woman in her thirties and a gentleman in his nineties.
The rooms couldn't have looked more different. Hers was full, bright colours, laughter between the tears, friends and family on their feet sharing the chapters she'd written in their lives. His was smaller, quieter, traditional. But the feeling was the same.
Gratitude. In both rooms. For a life that had left something behind worth speaking about.
That evening I ended up watching the film The Bucket List. I don't know if the timing was coincidence or something else entirely.
You'll know the film. Two men, both at the end, both suddenly faced with the question they'd been avoiding their whole lives. Not what did I achieve. Not what did I accumulate.
Two deeper questions.
Did I find joy in my life?
Did my life bring joy to others?
I sat with those questions for a bit after the credits rolled. Not because they were new to me. Because I'd just spent the day in two rooms where they'd already been answered.
Here's what struck me from being in those two rooms.
Neither of them waited until the end to live the answers to those questions. They didn't need a diagnosis or a deadline or a crisis to show them what mattered. They just lived it. Quietly or loudly, in their own way, they knew who they were and gave it freely.
Your chapters are still being written. Right now. Today. In the ordinary moments you might not even be paying attention to. In the way you show up for the people around you. In the things you give yourself permission to be.
The question isn't what will people say at the end.
The question is what are you writing right now.
So here they are. The two questions from the film. The same two questions I saw answered in those two rooms this week. two questions for you to reflect on today.
Are you finding joy in your life?
And is your life bringing joy to others?
Not someday. Not when things settle down. Now. As you are. In the chapters you're living today.
Joy is one of those words we use loosely. We say we feel it when something good happens, when the holiday arrives, when the result goes our way. But that's not really joy. That's pleasure. That's relief. That's the temporary lift of circumstances going in the right direction.
Joy is so much more than any of those things. It isn't dependent on what's happening around you. It doesn't arrive with the good news and leave with the bad. It sits underneath everything, a steady current rather than a wave. A deep okayness with yourself and your place in the world that circumstance can disturb but never extinguish.
That's what I saw in both of those rooms. Not people who had perfect lives. People who had found that current and learned to live from it.
That joy flowed out to the people in their lives too, washing over everyone in those rooms and allowing them to find joy in return.
Rumi wrote: When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
I think that's what I saw in both of those rooms this week. Two people who had found the river. Not because life had been easy, or long enough, or gone the way they planned. But because somewhere along the way they'd stopped performing and started living. Fully, honestly, completely themselves.
You know it when you see it in someone. There's a quality to people who are living from that place. A settledness. They're not performing or proving or constantly measuring themselves against some invisible standard. They're just present. Fully in the conversation, fully in the moment, fully themselves. They make you feel seen rather than assessed. They give without keeping score. They laugh easily and mean it.
That's joy made visible. Not the highlight reel. The ordinary texture of a life lived from the inside out.
I know what it is to act joy out rather than feel it. To perform contentment convincingly enough that even you start to believe it. For a long time I was good at that.
It wasn't until I stepped back and really understood myself, what I actually loved, who I actually was, what I actually needed, that something shifted. No performance. No pretence. Just me. And in that, a contentment I hadn't known was possible. A joy that doesn't depend on circumstances to exist.
That's the river Rumi was talking about.
It doesn't come from the achievements or the titles or the things accumulated. It comes from knowing yourself clearly enough to live from that place. And when you do, it floods everything. Not just in you. In the people around you too. When you live fully as yourself it inspires others, and brings light into their lives.
The woman in her thirties had found it. The gentleman in his nineties had found it.
The question is, have you started looking?
Matt
Thebookofyou.co.uk
Add comment
Comments