Joy is medicine. Indigenous people will tell you that a hummingbird’s joy awakens the medicine flowers.
Every year at this time, I get excited about my hummingbird feeder. Countless mornings, in quiet stillness, I have been surprised by the sound of a hummingbird’s oscillating wings as it darts about, seeking the sugar and nectar contained in the feeder and nearby flowers. Sometimes I make myself a statue next to the feeder so that they might land on me. Move or clench and the hummingbirds flutter out of reach, whizzing back again when I soften into stillness.
I have a fascination with the the way hummingbirds hover, a manifestation of being in motion while remaining perfectly still. It reminds me that movement does not always call for motion. Like a hummingbird, suspension in the air — and letting time stand still— assures me that there is always sweetness in existence, especially when I have to hover for a while.
Joy isn’t something we chase, or try to capture. Paradoxically, the wisdom of learning to kiss the joy as it flies means we understand that like the hummingbird, life travels in all directions and sometimes may not feel like it is even moving at all. Life is many sided and dynamic. “Life is always and all ways.”
We won’t come to know joy by pushing certain experiences away or trying to capture others and hold onto them. Joy does not operate the same way happiness does. Happiness is conditional and driven by the ego’s chatter about external things, status and temporary circumstances. Joy is unconditional and arises from embracing each moment with an open heart, come what may. Joy celebrates all experience, just because we are in this life, here and now.
