A Simple 3-Letter Word - April 6 2026

 

A Simple 3-Letter Word

April 6 2026

I forgot all about joy.

In my search for happiness

was I cheating myself

by aiming too low?

But it’s impossible 

to engineer such ineffable moments,

a high

that brings to mind 

words like wonder, ecstatic, transcendence.

To be joyful.

When you’re outside of yourself

and your petty concerns,

in the moment

and fully immersed.

When you’re feeling at the same time

dwarfed by the world

while filled with an awe

that leaves you everywhere all at once.

It’s been so long

I start to wonder

if I ever even was.

It seems easy for a child

when everything’s new

and you aren’t afraid to lose yourself.

Their faces give it away;

they haven’t learned to hide

how they feel.

The very old 

who have their health and are wise enough 

seem to find joy as well.

It’s in the small things, they’d probably say;

too bad the old

are easy to ignore.

An author on parenthood

called it no fun, all joy

and maybe she was on to something.

Maybe it’s not in the moment.

Maybe it’s the wholeness, not the parts.

And maybe you don’t even know it at the time.

I think back hard

and I do remember joy.

As I’m sure you must:

first kiss

first love

the birth of a child.

Or was it the unexpected thank-you note,

that tiny hand in yours,

the tenacious early blooms

poking through an April snow?

That like happiness, if you make a plan

it never works.

That like happiness

the more determined you search

the more elusive it becomes.

And that like happiness

you don’t achieve joy, then lock it away

like the prize you spent your lifetime seeking;

it’s not a place

or steady state

that’s an end in itself.

When the question was asked “when did you last experience joy in your life” it came as a shock. Joy? Wow, that’s a big ask; not something I actually walk around expecting. Is it already there, but I’m just not receptive — too dour, too closed, too set in my ways? Is it something you can make happen, an act of will? Or am I past it, too late in life for joy?

Really, it’s a word that never comes up:  when was the last time I even said “joy”?  So I thought that I might as well say it in a poem. After all, it’s easier to write a loaded word than say it out loud.