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Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
~ Helen Keller
It’s a weird question. All the obvious answers pop up first, tinged with sarcasm: water, food, air, breathing, the electrical stimulus that keeps your heart beating and your brain going. For some the answer might be God, or family and friends, or work, or a goal for the future. But take it one step further… what’s giving you the motivation right now to do things?
Sometimes it’s hard to find that deeper answer. Heading into the holidays and winter it can be challenging to maintain or even find our “mojo.” Some of us translate “mojo” as “more coffee,” but it’s really a slang term for excitement, energy, interest and enthusiasm. In French it’s joie de vivre, or “joy Tof life.”
Finding that joy of life externally is risky. Circumstances and situations arise, often outside our control, that erode our joy. People disappoint. We fail to live up to our own expectations. At no time of the year does this become more poignant than during the holidays, where we’re deluged with happy-ending Hallmark movies and cheerful scenes on Christmas cards and Norman Rockwell paintings of Thanksgiving tables loaded with food and surrounded by family and friends. And then reality strikes… our table might be empty this year, we might be grieving a loss, or traditions we’ve always held dear may no longer be applicable, and suddenly you find yourself struggling mentally, emotionally or physically.
Everyone has a different answer to “what’s keeping you alive today?” and our individual answers can change from moment to moment and season to season. That’s OK. Today what’s keeping you alive might be lunch with a friend, tomorrow it might be the new episode of Yellowstone, and next week it might be a new workout routine. The answer itself is less important than simply finding one.
By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com
