Joy.

Joy by James Vincent Knowles.

I know what joy feels like.

I do, I really do.

I too recall what it’s like to not recall it all.

I know what it’s like to put it off, to work & work & try to fight & work some more towards that which one hopes will matter, & to take the little free things in life to be all one’s allowed to enjoy, & in between those little things, the smile here & there or moments shared with a stranger you hope will become a friend one day.

But joy itself, that’s an entirely different thing, is it not, than hopes & wishes & dreams?

It’s a feeling from dawn to dusk & throughout the night, that the smile you see in the morning comes from that part of you so thoroughly deep inside your core that nothing can wipe it away.

You sing & dance & move a little differently everywhere you go & give a little extra shake to everything you do & say.

Yes, yes, joy is delicious, the best of all the things we feel me thinks; it’s not something one forgets or thinks might be true, it’s the most real thing of anything that’s real with a me or a you.

It is, however, something that one can lose sometimes, for one reason or another. I wonder now & again if that feeling will ever come back or if it’s gone now, forever

There are those who say they know for sure you cannot get joy from another. But I do not know that nor do i agree at all. Else how is it that when we choose to give joy to someone else, we see their entire being light up & then we feel right off our smile began to glow inside them first? And then we hear the voice of real happiness float across their curled up smiling lips?

So joy then it seems to me is something we give each other. It’s the one gift that must be given & is always free & never taken.

It lasts & lasts forever in our memory. It permeates all around us & percolates back & forth in a joyful exchange that at times has ups & downs … until that special moment in time that’s spent with more-than-a-special friend who takes us by surprise. And that is when, there & then, one finds out joy is always & only here & now & it’s full of grace & gratitude, all the time.

So that’s what I think about where joy comes from, in connections of all sorts to be sure, but especially when it’s with that special one, true, who takes us & makes us sing & dance & shows us we’re their special one too, the one that gives us joy all day & night no matter where we’re at, who never allows us to feel blue. The special deep core hum, infinite ohmmmmm……, vibrating, resonating friend, who’s willing to shout: oi, oi, oi-! hey! I fucking love you~!

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***To connect with the multi-talented James Knowles through Facebook click here. He is a gifted photographer and author and I am honored to call him a friend.

To book a photography session with James please email: James Knowles <pa********@ma*.com>

Here is a sampling. It’s a video he put together from his photos for me from last week’s karaoke yoga class (which was shot at Yogis Anonymous for the British tv show Lorraine and starred Rod Stewart’s wife. Thus the Rod song!)

It brought me so much joy I had to share with you!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ3qaOUKUXk]