JOY

If any human meeting is observed, it is very typical to detect that there is always a more relevant personality than the others, around which attention is focused. Attention usually hogs not the wisest, nor the most intelligent, but the personality that radiates the most joy. The sincerely cheerful face seems to have a magnet effect on young people and children. Because?

Genuine joy is characterized by three traits: it comes from within, it illuminates, and it is simple. Inside the human being is where life is faced and attitudes are chosen. A life full of meaning is the one that answers the question every morning, Is it worth it today?, with an enthusiastic YES, because it answers thinking of someone. The meaning of life is discovered when you see the happy face of the one you love.

For this reason, joy comes from within, from the personal decision to give oneself to someone. And everyone who has ever taken the test has to accept that the result is positive. There is more joy in giving than in receiving. Six years ago I had the opportunity to meet a 14-year-old girl who was diagnosed with leukemia. In a letter that she wrote to me from the United States, where she was hospitalized, she said: The hospital is a very beautiful place, all the walls are white. Everything is very clean and modern. The room is beautiful, full of light and from the bed I can see the clouds. The nurses are all good and kind to me. I have been very lucky with the doctors because I have a great time with them. On the floor where I am there are many children, and sometimes we can talk, and that is very entertaining. The rest of the tone of the letter was similar, but… since when is a hospital a very nice place? How is it possible that he was excited just to see the clouds go by? Why was everyone wonderful to her?

I read those lines again, a few years later, when Alejandra, as she was called, had already passed away, and I learned then that she was the one who was wonderful, because although she died early, I learned the fundamental lesson of life: she lived out , forgetful of herself, and irradiated where she passed the joy that enveloped her. Sadness, negativism and selfishness create dark environments. Joy enlarges the space and invites you to venture into hope. Joy, like light, does not make noise, but in its silence it transforms reality.

Finally, joy always comes hand in hand with simplicity. No artificial staging, simulating postures to appear more than one is, or complicating situations with eccentric novelties. The joyful spirit is because it is known as it is, it is accepted and it does not compare itself with others.

His happiness does not come from having more or less, but from a decision to want to be, and value himself for the decisions he can make, such as loving more and loving better. Those who live from the perspective of love discover that life is very simple.

The desire to achieve joy is still written in the heart of man with indelible signs, but we are invited to look for it where the heart cannot find it: in the external environment, in the accumulation of material objects, in liquors, in pleasures of a moment.

Joy is possible, and it is within everyone’s reach, but let’s remember, genuine joy comes from within, it illuminates serenely and is accompanied by simplicity.

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