Splashed By Joy

This picture was taken of me in the spring of 1995 at Seaside, Oregon. I had just been splashed by a hip-high sneaker wave. One of those extra large, extra fast waves that seem to come out of nowhere. I had been walking on the wet sand at the edge of most of the waves; highest reach. It was an incoming tide. I had been dabbling my toes in the edges of the waves where the water barely covered the top of my toes. Then suddenly there was this wave that hit me at hip level and just about knocked me down. It splashed me in the face. I remember this moment of surprise that became almost exaltation and then laughing out loud with a spontaneity that was/is quite untypical for me. It was in that moment of laughter this picture was taken.

I am posting this picture today because I've been contemplating again lately the irony of having been named Joy and then having struggled from at least age four with anxiety and depression and volatile mood-swings. Somehow I don't think it is coincidence. And even if it was, at some point in my mid teens I invested significance in it, made it into a kind of quest before I knew what that term meant. And ever since then my life has appeared to have a central theme related to the access to joy.

Awareness of that theme is included in the title of my blog. It might seem like nothing but a playful pun but at the time I came up with it I was aware of and gave equal meaning to both these senses: Joystory= the story of the life of this woman named 'Joy' and Joystory=the story of one woman's quest to attain a stable consciousness of joy.

I like to imagine that someday it will be possible to say, and to the fullest extent of both those senses, "I am Joy."

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These thoughts were stimulated by today's musings and readings in Eckart Tolle's book A New Earth and the Eckart/Oprah webinar that I participated in this evening. I had some insights aka 'aha moments' that I'm still mulling.