Joy and Thanks. Thanks and Joy.

 

It’s the start of Thanksgiving week, and so I, along with many others from the US, am considering what I’m grateful for.  There have been years when this has been rather challenging, but there has always been something I could name (even if I couldn’t feel it right then).  This year, thankfully, I am able to see and feel the bounty clearly.  Not because anything in my life has changed dramatically, but simply because I’ve been prepping for the holidays since June.  Well, not exactly.  But I have been focusing on claiming my joy, no matter what the circumstance or time of year.

As I mentioned in previous posts, back in June I lost my voice.  I lost it big-time.  I lost it on the night of a small performance.  That small performance was quite horrible, and that’s not an exaggeration.  In the following weeks, although I felt physically better, the voice thing was lingering on.  I had to cancel one church solo job I had, and the performance I did in late July, while infinitely better than early June, was still shaky.  Pitchy.  Blech.  I’m sorry for anyone that was attending and is also reading this.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I received the recording that I realized it…

Well, it’s almost the end of November, and somewhere along the way, the voice went back to normal.  At some point I stopped focusing on it, and just focused on claiming my joy.  I alluded to some thoughts I was having around this in another post, but basically, I had to come to a decision that no matter my circumstance or situation, I had every right to know joy.  Feel joy.  Live joy.  This was a somewhat tough concept for me to grasp, but thankfully I was pretty determined.  In the end, what it comes down to is that regardless of my status in the world—career, financial, relationship, friendship, family, talent, etc.—I was created in joy.  If that’s how I was created, it can’t leave.  It has never left.  My understanding of it, my belief in it, etc., may alter my thinking about this, but the fact itself remains.

Wow.

I can’t tell you how freeing this was.  Completely liberating.  I haven’t felt this light in ages.  It’s not that I don’t have down days, or sad moments.  It’s just that, overall, my feeling of joy is deep.  Instead of joyful moments that are situational, joy just is.  It’s so great!  So when considering my gratitude this Thanksgiving, I am most grateful for this:  a realization that joy is innate—not just in me, but in everyone.  My hope is that you can feel it, too.

The side benefit of that, of course, is that I got my voice back.  And with that, I can sing freely and joyfully.  At church, with my Songbirds group, in the car, Christmas carols, etc.  Singing has always been a happy experience for me, but now it is a joyful expression.  I promise you, there is a difference.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t continue to create sad songs…  🙂

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The Joy of Expression

A couple weeks ago, right before a culminating performance from a vocal workshop I’d been doing, I lost my voice.  The rehearsal just before the performance was shaky.  The performance, however, was just plain poor.  My voice just kept dropping as the evening went on, and I couldn’t hit all my notes.  I sounded like a boy in puberty!  Naturally, we had a big crowd which included a lot of people I didn’t know.  Thankfully, they were a forgiving crowd and I definitely informed them as to what was happening.  All that said, while things are better overall since that week, I still can’t sing.

It is very tempting to be distressed by this.  And believe me, I have definitely had my moments of “why?!”  “Why is this happening to ME?!”  Moments of self-pity, if you will.  But at the same time, it’s also been an opportunity to reflect.  To reflect on the meaning of song in my life.  Of singing.  Of performing.  Of music in general.  And also to reflect on the qualities that come with these that I feel I express.  Do these qualities have to be exclusive to singing, or creating songs?  Are there other ways that I can express these qualities?   If I could never sing again (which isn’t going to happen!), would I feel a deep sense of emptiness?

I think it’s important that we both acknowledge the amazing talents and qualities we’ve been blessed with, and also realize that if something were to change one or more of those talents or qualities, our lives would not be empty.  There are so many things that help define who we are, and the concrete “things” that are in our lives (be it a job, or a home, or a talent, or a person, or a car) do not create that definition in and of themselves.  So on that note, here is what I’ve learned over the past couple weeks…

My joy is determined not by what is in my life, but by where I choose to put importance, and how I choose to respond to any given situation.  It goes deeper than that, but that is one factor for me in learning to be joyous.  If I lose someTHING, or someONE, that I deem ultra-valuable to me, my response to this loss will go much farther in determining my happiness and joy than that loss actually would.  My qualities are bigger than the material expressions of them.  If I appear to lose my voice, that does not mean I’ve lost my ability to express.

These are ideas I’m working with as I heal.  Finding joy in the now and the many ways there are to express is my goal.  What’s yours?  🙂

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