Joy is a "J" word

Joy is a word often associated with Christmas, and then completely neglected the remainder of the year. There is joy in much that we do, touch, see, hear, etc. There are people in our lives that bring us great joy just by their presence. We should celebrate the joy we encounter each da,y as readily as we lament the inconveniences and sorrows that litter our life’s walk.

I wish day wrecker people could just be ignored, while day makers could be promoted to the front page of the newspaper, with a the caption “Made Someone’s Day Great!” I think a lot of us do that, and maybe that’s why Katie Couric’s audience share has steadily fallen since her shift to the CBS evening news. Her demeanor also shifted. She went from being cutesy beaming, bubbly Katie to being seriously intense, to the point of appearing like a blonde Maria Shriver, dull edged, bubble popper.

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Although I personally was never overly impressed with her, evidently many people were, and she had a vast audience on the Today Show. The joy she previously relayed to her audience (whether it was faked or real) is gone. But then, I guess that it’s hard to report the Iraq casualty toll, and an atomic bomb test in North Korea by a mad man, with any joy. Maybe if they hired that guy from ABC, (the one that always has a painful wince on his face), to report the bad stuff for her, and she followed it with joyful stuff, it would help her audience share.

I really am not qualified to comment much about this, since I don’t watch TV news, but have only glimpsed it as it was coming on. When you see the expressions on the news anchors’ faces, you just know they don’t have anything joyful to report, so I turn it off. I read the headlines off the net each morning, then look for something good to happen. Despite some of the bad stuff, usually there are still more things to be joyful about than bad stuff to be wrecked up over.

Even here in the deep south where we make an art of sorrowful suffering, we also find joy in the larger picture of our lives as well as life’s smaller pieces. I look for Katie Couric to get her ratings back up then, gracefully resign, saying she is grateful to CBS for the opportunity, but it’s just not what she wants to do with the rest of her life. In short, at the end of the day, I hope the poor girl goes for the joy. Because, if you’re accomplishing what others envy, but you’re unhappy, it sucks like swamp mud.

Posted by Dread who thinks helping others find and celebrate the joy in their lives could be a worthy quest for anyone; and joyful; and further, agrees with you that this post is a paradox at best, and probably oxymoronic, but found a bit 'o joy in creating it.