There has been an idea floating around in the vast reaches of my mind for quite some time about the nature of ‘joy’. It was particularly highlighted for me on Sunday when I had the great pleasure of taking photographs of a visiting steam train. Take a peek over here if you like trains (toot toot, chugga chugga).
There are more images over at Redbubble.com Just search for MarshEvents. (Sorry, I couldn't get the link to work).
While the shoot in the morning was okay and enjoyable, it was fairly routine. It wasn’t until the afternoon, standing on Parwan bridge and watching the steam locomotive billowing out clouds as it charged along past the bull farm, that I actually touched that special place in my heart. It put a whopping big smile on my face that was still there several hours later and vestiges the next day.
I use the word ‘vestiges’ advisedly. The simple pleasure provided me with a joy I seldom feel and it is far too fleeting. The feeling evaporated slowly through the day.
But that is the whole point of joy, is it not? If joy was any more than fleeting, would it not be something more akin to mania?
I wrote about ‘joy’ in a journal on Redbubble some time back and how it relates back to art – Come Write In (ecstasy and the artistic cringe)
The tangent here is perhaps a bit different though. It is more an exploration of lifetheuniverse blah blah blah.
Whatever our life’s work may be, what is it we are looking for in pursuing it? What is our ultimate aim?
When I was quite young, I asked my mother if she believed in God. It was just a question at the time, but it took on a huge significance to me as an adult. My mother snapped back that she didn’t have time to think about such things.
Now don’t be judgemental! My mother is a good and moral person. Perhaps my timing was really bad (most likely). And Mum has at times delivered flippant responses to things that have had huge importance to me. But I understand this much better now as a mother than even just a few years ago.
I’ve been most fortunate to be raised by parents who wanted their children to make their own minds up about weighty issues in the world. I am yet to decide (if a decision is necessary) whether it was because Mum and Dad were just trying to make their own ways in life, or if it was a conscious decision. It matters not, really. The result is that I was able to explore Christianity (which provided me with a few precious memories of going to church with my Grandma on Sunday mornings), and later to work out for myself that I am perhaps more an Existentialist.
Wow, we just took the scenic route through some rather craggy parts of my brain. But this last point is what I’m getting at.
As an Existentialist, I believe in the here and now. Please understand that I do not embrace this belief! I was introduced to the whole concept when first attempting university in the early 1980s. Philosophy101 introduced me to a whole range of ideas I’d not encountered before, but this one stuck … and the premise that believing we are truly alone did in fact build on personal despair which was initially sown when I was aged about 10.
To a point, I believe that we do in fact have the freedom to create who we are, but I believe there are elements of nature/nurture there too. In revisiting this thought now, perhaps I am not entirely Existentialist.
ANYWAY …
Let’s throw in some random popular culture references here! “Pursuit of Happyness” (sic) is one – the story of a man sticking to an ideal. “Happy Feet” (ah sigh, singing penguins) – about someone who is different but determined to pursue that which makes them who they are. You get the idea!
As a creative person (insert an assertive nod here) I am faced with conflicting notions that I must create to fulfil who I am, but the belief that art serves a luxury function that would not survive in a post apocalyptic existence. Wow, what do I mean by that? Gardeners feed people, agriculture too. Engineers build things that help us to survive and thrive. Mothers nurture, fathers protect, sewing provides protection from the cold, enforcers maintain an order of some description, scientists discover and invent. Art … presents ideas … and perhaps these lead to some of the other things.
In the here and now, my art does almost nothing for my practical existence. I pursue it because it is what I must do. I try to market it because I need to live in a capitalist society but marketing is not what I do well if at all. This simple fact reduces the positive effect my art has on me.
But Sunday’s joy was something else. That joy empowered me to do all the other things I must do. Witnessing and capturing those joyful seconds meant so much to me. The joy was fleeting because a part of my essential being is to share and few have shared these moments with me. The lack of sharing has disempowered.
I think at this point my therapy session must end. If you have read this far, thank you so much for sharing my journey into some fairly hefty ponderings. The huge upside is that I have found the next stepping stone in my own personal pursuit of ‘joy’. Perhaps too I will share exactly why steam trains have such an effect on me. It’s a happy little anecdote. I can temper it with why bagpipes make me cry. Don’t want to appear to be too ‘manic’!
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