Doing joy

For those new to The Wild Now, welcome to a tiny, month-long experiment I’m calling, The Joy Experiment. It began April 1st. You can learn more it about by checking out previous issues below.

If you've been trying your own joy experiment, what have you discovered?

Even if you're not capturing or recording your moments of joy, peace, delight, surprise, curiosity, or well-being in a notebook or on your smartphone, simply being open to discovering such moments in your day is the starting point.

When a feel-good moment seems to be passing through, a moment that might go otherwise unnoticed or unexplored—even if it seems soooo tiny—pause, slow down, and ask, "What else is here?"

In looking through my personal journal to decide what to share with you today, I've chosen just one joy moment. I'd planned to offer 2-3, but as I worked with this one, I realized it's enough for today.

I want these shares to inspire and inform your own experimenting with joy and not bog you down with a too-long read. Sound good?

Saturday, April 5, 2025 | Re-creating in the garden

A good day today.

Hands in moss and mud, I dug up colorful stones that, years ago, my husband gathered then placed to decorate an earth basin for catching water from a now, long-gone, bamboo water fountain. Something once lovely in a patch of garden by the front door.

Flicking clots of soggy dirt from my fingers every so often, I remembered a tiny tree frog that startled me as I worked in the same spot. I’ve lost track of how long ago, only that it was BP (before pandemic).

Perched inside the bamboo shaft, he suddenly let out a ‘kwack-kwack, kwack-kwack, kwack-kwack.’ His call was amplified by his temporary, hollow home. Peering inside to see him, his eyes big and shiny-round and no doubt equally surprised, I was literally thrilled. Just remembering, I’m thrilled again.

Later came the small cement owl statue that now stands guard, tufts of moss on his head, baby tears greening up his talons. He’s looking down at what a couple of rainy winters, moss growth, and summer violet roots have turned into a mucky depression.

Time like water is fluid, pulling stones underground so slowly you don’t see them disappearing. Time like water is persistent, pulling us all deeper into earth. One day what and who was here is simply missing from the scene.

Ah, but I am still visible. That’s a happy bit of news.

So all afternoon, my hands, in moss and mud, retrieved the greens and blues and reds, rescued the speckled blacks and marbled greys, rediscovered the quartz in whites and pinks.

While soaking clean a surprisingly steep pile of stones and rocks in a bucket and after tearing away the tangles of roots below the owl, I lined the basin with grey river pebbles from a trail out back. A layer of resistance, I thought—my tiny waging of war in opposition to that pull of water and time.

“Now the bright stones will stay, glistening in the basin,” I say to my two curious cats, looking at my work, then up at my face. “I know what you’re thinking. Oh, these humans like to deceive themselves, yes?”

I hadn’t planned to do this project today. But. The garden looked sad and so full of absence. The mucky depression in the garden was also in me, though maybe magnified by too little sleep.

There’s so much you can never go back to, my mind kept echoing. So much that must remain in your history, always bitter-sweet and too short.

The bamboo pouring water into that basin cracked then broke. The frog taking up residence before the bamboo fully fell apart must now be off in frog heaven.

What can I still hold on to? What can I see and touch?

Somehow bringing my husband’s vision of that basin back to life, hoping it makes him feel cherished and more of himself at the end of his life, seemed the answer.

So, for awhile on a sunny, mild, spring day, after so much rain and more to come, I was absorbed. While he dozed inside after a restless night, I stepped into a flow. Peaceful. Focused. Kneeling in mud that left brown flowers on my jeans.

Body, mind, heart, spirit—all of me stayed immersed in placing the colorful pebbles and stones, one-by-one, below the watching owl.

Crazy, I suppose, but when I held a little geen rock, I tried to take in its green-ness, sense it’s journey through millennia into the palm of my hand. Where did it begin, seafloor or mountain? What tectonic shifts brought us together?

My husband once held you, I’d think. Thank you. If a pebble is what remains of a once-boulder, certainly something remains of you and me.

With each rock, the same. So, if you were watching me, you might have said, “She’s so slow!”

Despite how time-stressed my days can seem, juggling all that needs to be done, sometimes the goal isn’t another check mark on the list.

Satisfaction may come from ‘done,’ while joy is found in ‘doing.’ Even better? When you think you are doing for another, the reality is how doing is a gift equally for you.

Slowly the mucky depression gave way to a near-circle of vibrant, imperfect spheres, a basin holding so much more than color.

This is the art of loving what is, creating a mosaic out of then and now and what little you can see of what’s next.

For 25+ years (before the grief and life-rebuilding mentoring I do now), I worked in philanthropy, helping people make a difference in others' lives, their community, or some struggling corner of the world through charitable giving.

It was clear as I worked with donor after donor that so much giving is motivated by loss.

Human beings are meaning-makers.

Even in terrible times or traumatic experiences, we try hard to make what's senseless somehow make sense. We want what happens to matter. We want to matter.

I was young and early in my career when an 80-something-year-old, retired schoolteacher, living simply in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco taught me about the power of giving and joy.

Sitting in her living room with cups of tea, she told me why she was giving most of her estate to the veterinary medical program I was with at the time. We'll call her Gracie (to keep her name private).

She'd never married and had no children. "My students have been my kids," Gracie beamed. "And this little one," she added, reaching down to pet the small, white-muzzled, brown dog sleeping and snoring at her feet.

"You want to know the secret about giving?" Gracie asked me. I nodded.

"Okay, it's this. You touch the lives of people, and in my case animals, too, and that matters. You also feel really good doing it!"

Suddenly she leaned over her tea toward me, as close as she could get, whispering to my cheek, "Giving ... is selfish."

She sat back up, looking at me with a playful grin. "Not selfish in a bad way. But if you want to be happy in life, my dear, give, give, give."

Gracie is gone. Gracie is here, in me. Gracie continues in the lives of countless animals and people thanks to her 'selfish' giving.

You don't need to give money to make meaning.

In fact, giving by doing is a deeper well of well-being. How about some not-so-random-acts of kindness?

As one of my favorite poets, Jalaluddin Rumi, wrote (translated, of course), "There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground." That is, to experience meaning, and joy, in this life.

Comments & Community

If you feel up to sharing how you're answering this question, comments are incredibly welcomed—and I will respond. Your shared experience may be just the support and inspiration someone else needs.