At what age do you stop searching for your joy and start living someone else's?
Short Answer. Never.
Long Answer.
If you really start to take a look at life and happiness and joy, it probably comes as no surprise that most of us spend the majority of our days charged with fear. Fear of disappointing the heavens and the Earth and their preconceived notions on how we should or shouldn't be living our lives. On how we must concede our dreams, or at least consolidate and place them neatly on the shelf until the dust runs thick. We must not sell our souls for the easy, the standard, the unafraid. We must live large. We must stay wild.
They (parents, teachers, bosses, husbands, wives, etc.) don't decide your role on this Earth. They don't control your happiness. They do not have social standing over you to determine what is deemed right or wrong in the book of life. Because guess what? The book is made up. There is no book.
Only your story. One that would be wasted if it wasn't filled with your triumphs and failures. One that should be honest and unforgiving and full of rights and wrongs and everything in between. Stories with torn pages and smudged type. Lessons big and small. Heartbreak and jubilation.
See, I don't think joy simply means happiness. No, it's much more complex than that. Joy is living each day knowing that when your story ends, it won't be an afterthought. It won't be placed on a coffee table to look pretty and well-maintained.
Let it burst from the seams and speak volumes. Let it touch every single emotion. Let it run it's course into the dark and back out again. Let it weep. Let it shine.
Let your story be joy.
