Simple Joys

Oh, frabjous day! Callooh. Callay!
He chortled in his joy.
—Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll


On the surface a fairly straightforward theme—Simple Joys. Having just attended a class on midrash—the filling in of the story left by the gaps between words or sentences, I cannot read simple joys without recognizing the space between the words. Simple is quite complex. It begs for a personal definition. Does it mean that it’s no fringe and low maintenance? Are we talking economics? To be thrust into a simple existence is, to me, quite different than selecting simple as an option. And what do we mean by joys? That word, too often overused by the purveyors of some “happiness” ideologies, loses its potency when it is reduced to a clever saying. Is joy a social activity or can it be experienced in isolation? Is it a practice? Do we pass it along like an heirloom?

Simple, for me, doesn’t have strings and needs attached like barnacles. It’s unadorned— layers of embellishments weigh down the simple. Simple sometimes grows and grows until the original is inundated by needs. As for joy—, for me, it expands when it includes someone else, or the other is a recipient. So the space between simple and joys is either a gulf or a slit. The crevasse is when what is needed outgrows the simple and becomes complex before joy is attained. If I put these two words together —close together—I discover the splicing has a quality of immediacy and spontaneity.

Simple Joys