Chapter 46: Nurturing My Human, Part 4: Four Times the Joy for Every 3 Rows

It is time once again to Stew on this! When I clear my mind enough to feel joy, I can feel the suffering in the world and still hold the high watch and a hopeful vision for the future.

Though it is not essential, I invite you to read the first 3 parts (chapters 43-45) before reading this chapter. That way you will catch up to the rest of us in our journey down the steam.

Living according to the wisdom of Row Row Row Your Boat takes blissipline, especially the parts we covered in the first 3 chapters. Now we get to the part about what’s in it for us: merrily merrily merrily merrily!

The reward for keeping my oars in my own boat and persistently rowing gently down the stream, among other things, is joy. In fact, the song promises me 4 merrily’s for every 3 row’s. What a deal!

A clue to the mystery behind that deal comes from (as far as we know) the Buddha, who said, “When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

I cannot presume to know exactly what he meant, but I do not believe “pure mind” was some sort of moral judgment. He was referring to a mind that is not overly muddled or muddied by past conditioning, i.e. old streams of mental patterns, reactions and beliefs that we learned along the way - mechanisms that undoubtedly served us at one time but no longer do.

Mark Twain described those mechanisms in this way: “It isn’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble; it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

The list of things I know for sure that just ain’t so certainly includes all the ways I lose my oars in other people’s boat, resist rowing, and sometimes insanely choose to go brutally up the stream rather than gently down.

An “impure mind” gets me stuck in the mud. It makes it easy for me to forget what is important in that moment - especially taking care of my human.

What both Twain and the Buddha are essentially saying is that joy IS, and that joy is always IS-ing. They remind me that joy is what I experience when I am not otherwise choosing to “know” something else.

Similarly, to paraphrase A Course in Miracles, “I must have decided wrongly, because I am not in my joy.”

Just like love and peace, joy IS because it is not an emotion based on my thoughts or perceptions. It is, rather, a part of my essential nature.

So far, Row Row Your Boat has essentially been about ways I can have a purer mind - one that expresses more of my essential nature - so I can experience more joy. Indeed, keeping my oars in my own boat, keepin’ on keepin’ on, and being more compassionate with myself as I keep the boat headed downstream toward love and wholeness all help tremendously.

In addition, there are at least a couple of other things I sometimes know for sure that just ain’t’ so when it comes to joy.

The first is that before I can experience joy, I must first figure everything out, get to the very end of stream, wait for circumstances to change, and surgically remove everything I believe might be standing in way. Then perhaps I will deserve it.

But all that is simply not true. Since joy IS, I can experience it NOW! And only now! I do not have to wait for Mercury to come out of retrograde, for situations to improve, for my environment to change, or for all the people in my life to cooperate.

Joy is always present right where I am – and right WHEN I am.

In fact, all the joy in the universe is available to me in each moment. It lies like a bottomless well that sits just below the mud – a well that I can always choose to tap into.

Joy comes through the mud like a geyser, and the amount I experience depends on how “pure” my mind is, not necessarily on what is going on around me.

The second story I tell myself about joy is “knowing” that it is neither cool nor appropriate for me to access it or feel it in this world with all its suffering and its problems.

Well, if row row row is a call for persistence, then merrily merrily merrily merrily reminds me that it is not only okay for me to sink into the bottomless well of joy I am always floating upon, but also that whenever I do so, joy will be there.

Our song is not about escaping from the world. It is about navigating it while still honoring my duties in my only real job – to nurture my human. That remains my job regardless of my perceptions about the state of the world or whether it seems as though anyone else is doing THEIR job.

Choosing to keep at least one toe in the well of joy is the best choice I can make for the world as well as for myself, because that choice can inspire others to access their joy, too.

Folks, I am not suggesting that we all should be walking around with a goofy grin on our face saying, “la dee da, it’s all good.” And I do not intend to ignore the suffering in the world or to negate or minimize my own feelings in any way. I am suggesting that even in the schmootz, even in the face of sadness, grief, anger, hopelessness or despair, I can delve below the tip of my iceberg and tap into that well of joy. And it always helps.

Because joy is always IS-ing, it can coexist in the same moment with all my emotions. For example, I have often felt joy and sadness at the same time.

The example that comes to mind was when my dad was in the last days of his life in the hospital. He was mostly out of it and had not said anything coherent in several days. The nurse, my brother and I helped him into the bathroom and got him situated. When we left the bathroom, the nurse asked, through the closed door, “Harold, are you comfortable?” Well, my dad had answered that question the same way my entire life, but it was a complete and joyful shock when we heard a faint voice reply, “I make a living.”

The joy I felt in that moment had to be lurking just under the surface to erupt so quickly and beautifully in the midst of one of the hardest times in my life.

When I am in a schmootzier section of the stream of my life, accessing joy helps me to tap into my resources, values and strengths, which in turn makes me maximally effective and able to make the most grounded, loving and whole choices and actions going forward.

When I clear my mind enough to feel joy, I can feel the suffering in the world (as well as my own) and still hold the high watch and a hopeful vision for the future.

For me, it is not a question of deserving or justifying joy. You and I ARE joy. Our joy lights up our lives and lights up the world. You and I are each an extraordinary miracle, and our joy is simply the celebration of that truth.

I intend to continue to row gently, and to open more and more to the beautiful deal of 4 times the joy for every 3 rows.

Stew on that, and I will see you next time, assuming you are heading gently down the stream as I intend to be.

We offer everything we do on a “love offering/pay the most your heart dictates” basis, just as we did in our chiropractic office. So, if this blog nurtures your soul and you’d like to give something back in exchange, click on the link below!