Roads to Joy

Snowdrops, when they appear, are such a delight, but nowhere more so than when they’re in one’s own garden, as the dreich of January flushes itself out.

And with these harbingers of hope, we’re finding that work we’d been planning is finally beginning, as if the world around us has suddenly woken up and has kicked into gear. It’s a delight to see things happening, emerging, as it were, from near-frozen shoots. 

Our neighbour friend has been building us a garden shed, discretely tucked away so that you’d never know it was there. When I get it all tidied up (it’s holding an accumulation of garden stuff at the moment, all stacked on top of each other) I should be able to attend to the garden much more conveniently. And that will likely mean that the alacrity with which I do the gardening work will be that much more apparent.

I say ‘should’ and ‘likely’ because I’m not entirely sure that I won’t be lazy, that I won’t persist in my retreat to the keyboard and my writing eyrie, especially on dank days. But when the sun comes out, and the air is fresh with the energising sense of ozone, I am, almost certainly, going to find work outside.

My challenge will be to combine the gardening effort with the kayaking pleasure, on those days of delight.

Either way, as the seasons begin to bump up against each other, and spring beckons, it should be a great ride. I keep exclaiming to myself: there’s fun ahead! And then I realise that right here, right now, is also fun, also a wonderful and stimulating time of adventurous exploration.

I realise that the process conveys more of the joy than one might think, but I’m not yet at such a rarefied position as to be able to say that the process is everything. I’m wired to be pushing toward a goal. But if the goal should prove illusory, then I’m happy to have experienced the process. This back-and-forth realisation of how I’m energised feels like an important distinction, to me.

Somehow the goal, and the work toward it, conspire together to elicit joy.