[Vulnerability & Power - XXVI]
Joy rarely happens in isolation. For all the resources online informing us of the “three things you can do to be filled with joy,” often this truth is ignored: Joy requires others.
Two weight bearing walls of the structure of joy are grace and generosity.
Grace by definition is easy to understand: Receiving that which we don’t deserve. But here’s why it’s hard in practice. It requires a risk-filled relationship. On one side is benevolence and on the other is an awareness of need, an acknowledgement of weakness, a posture of humility. The recipient must be vulnerable.
Grace without pure generosity, however, threatens to be transactional, quid pro quo in nature. Pure generosity is far more challenging than it sounds. It has no expectations. No requirements. No strings attached. When the gift leaves the giver’s hands, as it were, the result is open-ended and mysterious. The giver must be vulnerable.
Joy requires grace and generosity.Both require vulnerability. Both require community.
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I work through misconceptions about JOY in my upcoming book, Walking Trees (February 2022). Sign up for the weekly news blasts here.
