Joy, Fast and Slow

Dear Patient,

Last week’s Note Joyful prompted a response from a reader about a recent revelation she’d had: that there is fast joy and slow joy. She wrote:

Fast joy is finding the first daffodil poking up in the early spring. The sunlight through the yellow maple leaves behind our house. The surprising little things that catch our breath and elicit a smile. But there is also a kind of joy that lives with us over time, growing and changing us…constant, deep and…well…slow. A different kind of joy but certainly in the same category of unexpected delight that is a daffodil shoot.

I’ve been thinking about this distinction between slow joy and fast joy all weekend.

A couple of weeks ago I was taking something out to my car. I turned around and standing there in my neighbor’s driveway, a mere forty feet from me, were three deer. Just calmly watching me. The incongruous sight of these three wild creatures on my busy urban street was so startling, so enchanting, I yelped out loud. Fast joy. It’s like a little present from the universe. It shows up, often without purpose or pattern, conferring its delights. There’s nothing we do to earn it. It simply appears.

But slow joy is an investment. Slow joy contains a piece of us because we work it with our hands and hearts and love it into being. It isn’t always easy or fun. It might coexist with doubt and disappointment. But it’s the stuff that gives life richness and meaning. Creating. Nurturing. Tending. Healing. Slow joys.

I’ve begun to think of these twin joys as yin and yang partners, one swift and ephemeral, the other deliberate and enduring, together forming a complete whole. Joy, in all its forms, is ours to notice, and ours to nourish.

Love and gratitude,

Your Acupuncturist