On Joy

As Featured in the Artistry – Moments of Joy Exhibit at the Dedham Museum & Archive, July 30th-November 30th, 2026

Had we gotten it wrong?

Was it not an emotion this entire time?

Is Joy rather a place – elusive to find as you are in fact within it?

One morning after a long health journey I sat in my favorite chair, near a window that lets in the morning light. Josephine, my rescued calico, chatted away at the birds – all busy with morning duties.

Sometimes I wondered, who had rescued whom?

At some point I realized that for the first time in years, I had no doctor appointments that month.

What a place to be in – a place of Joy. A state of Joy. A moment of Joy. What was it then – all of these iterations of being?

In the gentle sunlight a breeze crept in through the window – the moment’s energy was actually breathable. Was Joy somehow self-sustaining? What could it mean for something understood as emotion to physically contain me, uplift me on this current of morning air?

Of Joy’s related concept Heaven, we often consider it an actual place, and one that is far away both in time and scope. But I wonder now have we lessened Joy’s full essence to provide solace for a half-life, lived in expectation of a destination?

What I can only offer is my experience in the sunlight that morning. When in this moment of exhausted peace with Josephine, I genuinely didn’t know whether what I was experiencing was what Heaven could be like, what it actually is, or whether in fact this was true Joy.

But perhaps, that is the word’s nature in its entirety, and has been all along.

Signed,