Fightin’ the Joy Thief

Don’t You Remember?

I was awake early. I couldn’t sleep. To address my sleepless anxiety and wrinkled nose over a thickening midsection, I strapped on a twenty pound rucksack and put my boots to the pavement. One hour and three-and-a-half miles later, I had some ruck induced clarity and remembered something that I forgot.

Not every enemy is at sea.

Chaos waters are not bound to the shore. Oceans Hungry Grasp will combine forces with River Surges in Sunlight to have its vengeance (there’s an esoteric reference for all my fellow board gamers). If you’ve ever had a leak in your roof, you know the pathfinding mastery of water. It finds a way. The blessing of life becomes a curse as it transforms into an agent of rot and decay.

Comparison begins to seep in through the weak cracks of our own forgetfulness. Once it works its way in, it begins to rot. This cord of Poseidon is the mind. The mind forgets. Our blessing of reason becomes a wicked agent bent in on itself when it leaks what we have tested and found trustworthy. When your mind is weak and has you looking up for answers, it’s a prime target for a seagull to crap in your eye. What’s the eye filled with then? It ain’t truth, brother. What you’re seeing isn’t the true life.

Cognitive distortions. Mental health. Sometimes I’m my own worst enemy as I forget what’s good and begin nodding my head with every sultry sea witch that sings how much better someone else’s song sounds. Comparison is one of the vortexes that has snared me into down spirals of misery.

It’s a terrible thing to see through the lens of everyone else having their lives together except for you. Social media doesn’t help with the illusion. Neither does the rapid pace of life where we tell each other we’re busy but doing good. These brief points of contact are opportunities for our ships to spring a leak and allow comparison to come in. What a thief of joy. Speaking of…

TR nailed the wisdom right in the center bullseye on that statement. Comparison has an additional element. We compare ourselves with what we think we see but as we talked about last issue, perception isn’t always reality. Perception will show us a distortion of our comparative imagination. An illusion. A facade.

What’s the danger of basing our comparisons on a facade, anyway?

The Facade

As I walked around a neighborhood with lawns more immaculate and home exteriors more decorated than my own, I was struck with the sense of put-togetherness. Look at these houses. Look at these tiny yards. Of course the yards look perfect; the effort required to maintain a small square footage of property is almost as small as the property itself.

When you have taken on larger responsibilities than postage stamp size yards, things are not always so tidy. As I walked the sidewalks past these glistening monuments of neighborhood glory, a curious tarnish caught my attention. The illusion broke down. Many of these homes had fences in the backyards. Behind the constructed boundary of a fence, the yard was a mess. Weeds, bare spots, toys and trash within the fence contrasted with what could be seen from the exterior. It wasn’t only one of them; it was several.

In a moment, I could see through the matrix of blind comparison that was stealing my joy.

I wish I was the lone man on this joy stealing island but I know it isn’t true. One, Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t have made the statement if only one soul was afflicted with comparison. Two, I hear it from the mouths of peers. It’s a fence that conceals the disorder of others when seen from a distance. How often are you close enough to see through the slats of your neighbor’s proverbial fence and into the true disorder of their lives?

Not all fences are intentionally built but we’re not talking about fence builders. We’re talking about our own minds. The cord of Poseidon that’s stealing your joy is not originating outside of you.

Jovial Clarity

I wish I could tell you I write every one of these installments from a point of strength, but I don’t. There’s many more voices on the internet than there are fences in our neighborhood. If you’ve felt the pang comparison, I can at least tell you that you’re not fighting this battle alone. If you’re fighting it, there’s a near guarantee your son is fighting it. The little fellow follows his father.

As grim as it sounds, this is a fight for our lives because there’s only so many grains of sand left in our hourglass. Now that my own children are in their teenage years, I can see how I was complacent in their younger years and got into the mindset it was always going to be this way. Momento Mori may be true but it can also be a facade.

Here is the truth that brings clarity. We are all mixed bags.

Nobody has it all together. We’re going to get some things very right and some things very wrong. We are not efficiency machines. We’re not machines at all. None of us have it all together. One person’s ship may look immaculate but the crew is in turmoil. Another man’s accolades are shining like the sun off the surface of the Pacific but he will never be enough in his own eyes. A suit and tie can hide a pornography addiction. A group of friends can hide loneliness. A collection of the latest and greatest can hide a mountain of credit card debt. A pretty face doesn’t mean she isn’t a nose picker. A bright glory in one area will often have a shadow side in another area.

Around New Years Day every year, my family has a practice for each member to pick a word of the year. For 2024, my word of the year is jovial. Joy has been a long struggle for me so I was already considering it as my word. As I was listening to the audiobook for Planet Narnia by Michael Ward, saving any exhaustive explanation for the book itself, the pick of joy matured into jovial. I’m striving to cultivate this kingly characteristic in myself. Some days are better than others.

The fight for joy is a multi-faceted jewel formed in the depths of pressure. You’ll have wins. You’ll have losses. I can’t locate the original source but I once heard in a song commentary, “You’re going to have good days and you’re going to have bad days; today isn’t going to be the end of either one.”

We aren’t perfect but we can’t let that keep us from acting. We have to do the best we can with what we’ve got, all the while making the effort to clear our eyes of any illusions. That may mean you need to go out for a walk today. If you do, get out of your own head and look around you. You may not be able to dispel the mental cords of Poseidon back into the abyss from whence they came, but you can loosen their hold on you. That may be just enough to take a breath.

When your mind isn’t working against you, you can be more free to breathe. Free to exhale. Free to invite in the levity. Our sons need that from us. Looking at the current landscape, the world is going to need that from our sons in the coming days. It’s way too serious out there and the ability to let out some belly laughs may serve as a lighthouse to lost sailors around you. The devil hates scorn and what better way to serve it up than by laughing at the days to come? What he prepared as a famine, the Lord can serve as a feast. Let the reader understand.

The practical side of this is that we have to get close to people if we want to fight against these facades and illusions. The highest form of relationship is knowing someone and being known by them. Only when we are close enough to others to see the rot in each other’s life can love and grace and mercy be applied. This is why we can never approach God in pride, only in humility. From there on, we are merely beggars who have found bread and sharing it with others. Our situation is pitiful, but the kingdom of God will not be shaken by any comparison rot. Heaven is a stronger rock than the name we scribble on the ship of our lives. The paint will wear off as it’s beaten by the water we sail upon. Only one Name has enough truth in it to weather the storm. We, and by we I mean I, need to lighten up and laugh at my frequent ridiculousness. What’s my name, anyway, and what is it in comparison with every other mixed bag person on this world.

To be free of comparison and teach our sons to live the same way, with an eye on truth and humility of who we are, we can really dish it out to Poseidon. And I’m not just talking about the cord in our minds on that one.

Let out a laugh and give him hell, guys.

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Talk to y’all in two weeks.

~ J.P. Simons