Flailing, Floating, Flowing: The River of Joy
Summer has been peeking its head around the bend, and I’ve had water on my mind. Playing in the pool with the kids, listening to ocean waves crashing on the shore, digging my toes into warm sand. I’ve also been reflecting on how water has become my reference point for this journey of healing, rippling through the River of Joy, from Flailing to Floating to Flowing.
Flailing. It was under the surface at first, kicking and screaming deep inside telling me that something was not right. The maya of happiness was all around me, only I couldn’t actually touch it. There was no embodied sense of being present enough to experience that happiness. Tethered to old conditioning of shoulds and swimming in shame for the flailing within, numbing became my lifeboat. Treading water, I appeared okay on the outside and appearances were all that mattered.
Eventually my flailing began to cause waves that broke through the surface. Grasping for a way to feel the happiness, knowing that there was a River of Joy flowing somewhere beyond, I began to untether myself. One by one, I released the ropes that bound me to that life – my career, my marriage, my home, my identity as a Good Indian Girl. Letting go was freedom, liberation. Or so I thought.
Floating. I had done the unthinkable and felt like I was floating. Only, this was a suspended animation kind of floating in the sky – detached, disconnected, and adrift. I didn’t know what to do once I had untethered myself from old conditioning and beliefs that held me, even when I didn’t want to be “held back” by them. I was observing the stories of my life from afar, I wasn’t actually living them. Freedom from the wild desperation of barely treading water, not yet an embodied, immersive freedom that nourished and sustained.
Flowing. I imagined the River of Joy to be a wondrous body that could be cultivated, shaped, intentionally created. If I willed it, worked at it hard enough, I could manifest it. Oh, how wrong I was! Joy is not constructed. Rather, it is a life-giving, awe-inspiring experience in which we become more truly ourselves.
Author Jeannette LeBlanc writes “You can’t artificially fabricate joy. You can’t guarantee it will show up, even if you take all the right steps. But you can put yourself in its path, over and over again. You can intentionally create opportunities where joy can show up and hang out. Where it can grab on and take hold. Where it can unleash and dance, wild and free. You can, even in the hard and uncertainty, find presence in the smallest moments of peace and happiness, those momentary touch-points where laughter rises, where joy bubbles up and over. Where fun happens. Where you smile, with your whole body, and mean it.”
It is said that the opposite of joy is not sadness, but fear. For me, I think it’s a fear of letting go of numbness, the comforting tether of familiarity and safety, that has kept me buoyant – but not fully alive – over the last decade. Perhaps also floating so far away from anything I’ve known that I no longer recognize myself.
In fact, I realize that I do have tethers in place, healthy conditions that shape the contours of the ever-flowing River:
My kids (ironically their names translate to river bank/ North Star, tranquil/ flowing, and brilliant/ lotus!).
My faith and renewed sense of self and purpose.
My community, each and every one of you.
Rather than trying to grab hold of that River of Joy (have you ever tried to hold water?), what if I let go enough to trust the river would hold me afloat for now? Recline on a raft of your love and support, bask in the warmth of sunshine, listen to melodious bird-song, and allow myself to be, just BE. Perhaps even loosen the reins of numbness and take a plunge, immersing myself in the refreshing coolness of flow, exploring wondrous depths of joy and happiness, and surrendering to the easeful peace of letting go. Perhaps one day soon, the River of Joy will flow through me.
Whether you are flailing, floating, or flowing, I invite you to let go and take a sacred pause in the coming weeks – breathe deeply, take a walk outside, revel in the graceful ease of a bird in flight, see the world through a child’s eyes. Let Joy flow through you, let it unleash and dance, wild and free!
