Bring Joy (Hello. Goodbye.)

I finished a leadership training a couple of weeks ago and paused to thank the participants before we wrapped up. I thanked them for their engagement and their participation. And, I explained to them that I had lost a friend and team member just two weeks before to a tragic and untimely death. After two days of adrenaline facilitating and actually enjoying it, I was clearly and quickly coming down off the high. Through tears, I thanked them for helping me find joy in my work again during such a terrible time. I explained that getting back in there and doing the work was one thing, but I hadn’t yet figured out how I would find joy in it.

Fast forward to today, about a month later, when I was out for a run in one of my sacred places, Shelby Park. I’ve been running lately without music because I recognize how noisy my head has been since he died. When I run, I just let my head be noisy until it gets tired and finally quiet. I just let it run while I run.

I passed a woman going the other direction whose t-shirt said in bold letters: BRING JOY. I instinctively complimented her and after she’d passed thanked her somewhat to myself.

That shirt planted a new thought path amidst the other noise in my head. It quickly dawned on me that I needed to reframe where I am and how I have been thinking about it since my friend’s passing. I need to stop looking for joy, trying to find joy, and instead concentrate on bringing it. Looking seems an endless, outward journey. Bringing feels like an empowering, inward prompt. (That’s a helluva t-shirt.)

Over the last month, I’ve been looking. During my search, my “good mornings” to my team were practically non-existent for several weeks. They weren’t “good” mornings. They were shitty mornings. And, I’m shitty at faking it. I just needed to get through the day and get some stuff done and put one foot in front of the other. No more. No less. No joy.

This last week, I somewhat unwittingly returned to the “good mornings” but still a bit half-heartedly. I’m trying or perhaps I’m just progressing and it’s not really about effort. I don’t know. I know my “good morning” is not insincere, but it’s also not what it used to be. Better, but joy would be a stretch.

This is what was running through my noisy mind thanks to that t-shirt.

And then, a bicycle approached going the opposite direction and it had two little girls in some sort of contraption on the back with a dad driving. The girls were facing each other, meaning one of them was looking forward in the direction the bike was going and one looking back to where it had been. As I passed, the girl facing forward broke into my noise with an enthusiastic “hello!” And, by the time I was responding in-kind, the other little girl said “goodbye!” It was cute and funny and kind of brilliant.

I kept running now pondering these two little girls and slowly realized something important from that interaction: every moment is both a hello and a goodbye. It passes as quickly as it is acknowledged, often more quickly. This is a simple fact of life. It’s fleeting.

Now, to connect that with my previous noise on grief and my t-shirt prompt to “Bring Joy”…

Not every moment is joyful. Not by any stretch and not just in the midst of tragedy. Life is complex and always will be. Joy is a function of sorrow and sorrow is a function of joy. But, every moment is, in fact, passing just as certainly as it approached. Hello. Goodbye. Another moment is there waiting. We don’t have to look for it.

The shirt didn’t say “be joyful” or “be happy”. It said to “bring joy”. So, what’s the difference?

Fundamentally, one is about a state of being we often can’t control. The other is a choice of an action that we usually can.

Even in the midst of loss, I can find joy in what my friend/colleague and I created together and bring that joy to new work. I can bring the joy of the memory of his laugh as I face an office full of other friends/colleagues who are laughing but aren’t him. I can bring the joy resonating in the echoes of our absurd jokes and his goofy impersonations as I listen to others joyfully bantering among themselves. I can bring those joys to my current work and the opportunity I have to build on what we started. The joy of what we had.

This doesn’t mean it is easy, but it means I have agency and not just aspiration. I can bring joy and not just look for it, not merely hope to find it.

Image: https://greatruns.com/nashville-shelby-bottoms-greenway/

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