What Brings You Joy?

In early July, when I wrote about feeling the need to accomplish something before I turned 35, Susan commented that "Calling is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need." After I emailed her to tell her how much I enjoyed that statement, she sent me a copy of Let Your Life Speak, by Parker J. Palmer. I enjoyed the book, and truly meant to post on this ages ago, but...well, just but. The summer got difficult. The goals in my original post seem laughable now, since I haven't written much of anything since then, but Susan's advice on calling still speaks to me. Palmer quotes Frederick Buechner, who defines vocation as "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." Great joy, great need.

The order is important, as Palmer points out. Thinking about the needs of the world is overwhelming. Better to think about what brings us joy, first, and work outward from there. So I started thinking about it. I should explain, before I go further, that while I do consider motherhood to be a vocation of sorts, I'm thinking more externally. Yes, my children bring me joy; but my job, as their mother, is to raise them to be independent, to grow up and leave and be successful out there, on their own. I've never felt it healthy or right for my life to be all about my children--or any other person, for that matter. So when I talk about joy, here, I'm being more specific, thinking about what I can do, or what I've done, that fulfilled me, independent and external of the work I do within this family, which is hard, fulfilling, joyful work of a different sort. Hopefully that makes sense.

So what does bring me joy? Different from the random, wonderful things (and people) in this world that cause happiness simply by existing--what activity, what job, what work has brought me joy? This is not an easy question to answer. I can start with writing, I suppose, since that's what my original post focused on. It's hard to pinpoint the joy there. I truly love this sort of writing, the ideas shared and connections made, and the blogs I most enjoy reading are similar--the writer is sharing and making connections to and with the larger world. I enjoy parts of fiction writing, creating characters and seeing what they'll do, arranging words just so, catching an idea or image or thought. But writing also involves quite a bit of unjoyful activity, at least for me. It's not the Thing that brings me the most joy; or, perhaps, better to say that it is not balanced. The Joy does not outweigh the UnJoy.

When I went back to school for a second degree, in English (concentration writing; majoring in writing wasn't a choice) I ended up minoring in Art. I wanted to take a photography class--I'd been fooling around with an SLR camera for a while, but I wanted to really understand what I was doing--and the prerequisite was 2-D design. I later found out the prereq was only required for art majors--I could have just signed up for the photography class. But I never thought to ask.

I'd always enjoyed art but never felt legitimate. In my school system, which was heavily tracked, the "smart" kids were funneled towards French in junior high. Everyone else took art. Isn't that a nice dichotomy? You were either smart, or, well, okay, you can take art. (One student's parents fought for her to stay in art; apparently she was considered too smart not to take French.) It gets worse. In high school, where three credits of art were required for graduation (that works out to one semester, one measly semester), when I signed up for a ceramics class after I'd already completed the necessary three credits, my house master argued with me, saying that taking an unnecessary art class would just drop my GPA. Do you see the assumptions? Art is worthless if you're smart, if you're smart you're not creative anyway and you'll just do badly in art... and I have to say the art teachers weren't much better.

So I sat in that college art class on the first night, surrounded by the artsy types from high school, who were all six years younger than I, feeling like an impostor. The first thing the professor said was that it didn't matter who you were in high school, what reputation you had for being "different," where you hung out, or how you dressed. None of that made you artistic. By the time he was done, I think I was actually breathing again. Halfway through the semester he was encouraging me to at least minor in art. He is the first person who really encouraged me, who saw and nurtured any shred of talent. I decided to minor in art, and you know those people who sit down and next thing you know, they have this beautifully rendered drawing? That wasn't me. I worked. For hours. I'd go into the studios and spend time and time and more time. I spent the equivalent of a full-time job's worth of hours in the darkroom, but it was drawing that really took my hardest effort. My drawings were good, but they were not effortless. That shred of talent was backed up with lots and lots of work.

But I noticed, during the two years I studied nothing but English, writing, and art, that while I could write a great paper or a good story, and I had no qualms about sitting my butt in the chair and revising, it felt like work, even though it came much easier than the art assignments. I often had to force myself to sit and write, and for the fiction workshops, I often left writing my contribution to the last minute. I needed a deadline and external motivation. (Although, again, I would revise and revise and revise. I wasn't lazy.) Whereas the drawings took more work on my part, but it didn't feel like work at all. I loved all of it. And the photography was just pure joy, from the camera to the film to the smell of the chemicals, the intimacy of the darkroom and the magic of exposed emulsion revealing the image I'd seen, many many steps ago, through my camera lens. I loved that photography involved both my creative side and my scientific, precise side. I needed both.

I won't get that detailed into all the Things That Bring Me Joy. Being physically creative, in the sense of making things (versus stories) certainly does, and while photography is neither practical nor desirable right now (and will anyone have any use for a darkroom in a decade?), knitting provides some of the same joys. I like solving problems with yarn, having an idea of what to make and figuring out how to do it. I enjoy the pencil and calculator part as much as the knitting part, I think. (I also enjoy knitting other people's patterns, but I do tend to tinker.) I like making things with my hands that have a useful purpose. But I do think it's important that I'm engaging both sides of my brain, my problem-solving side and my creative side. And since I am taking care of children as my full-time job, it certainly helps that knitting is a mode of creative expression I can do in odd moments, here and there, as time allows.

Other joys? Helping people, although I tend to burn out quickly. Writing, but only certain kinds. Organizing--I'm good at it, and there is joy in attending to details and seeing a plan unfold without problems. And this is probably odd, but I really enjoy editing. (Somebody needs to, right?) How this all connects with the second part, the world's greatest need, is beyond me right now. One step at a time.

But my question for you...what activity, work, whatever you want to call it, brings you joy?