Joy is Something You Decide to Do

From Kim at Starry Sky Ranch:

I am firmly convinced "happy" is a verb. As my friend Elizabeth says it is a decision we make everyday to wake up and do it all over again. Not only to do it all, but to do it with the acknowledgement of the blessing hidden inside every trial. We have to decide if this is "monotonous, lonely, and relentless" or if is it an embarassment of riches. We are swimming in blessing if we just open our eyes and embrace it. Shame on us when we neglect to notice. Another Day in Paradise

GK Chesterton writes on the idea of "Conditional Joy" that joy is dependent upon gratitude:

"It is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt. And all such captious comparisons are ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all."

"Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless."

"In everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. . . . The point is, that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on and force himself to be happy. "

Lord, today help me to notice the blessings I am swimming in.