Joy and Self-Forgetfulness – Sunday, August 12, 1984
Among the drab and routine days that life often holds for us are a few moments that pierce us with joy. Having known those, we are never quite content until we feel them again, and we wander our days thinking something is missing. Yet, too often, joy eludes us, and we tear at the curtains trying to find where it hides.
St. Augustine said it this way, “For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge…and another to tread the road that leads to it.”1 From past experience we know joy is possible, but where do we find it on a Tuesday morning when we’re late to work?
The great struggle for most of us may really come down to one thing: what is the ruling force at the center of our souls? As much as we hate to admit it, for many it is self-absorption in one form or another—fear, vain ambition, wounded pride, self-pity, one-upmanship. We are too often locked in a prison cell whose dimensions are no bigger than ourselves, and we measure each experience only as it reflects through the bars.
We cannot see people, objects or experience for what they are in themselves—only for what they do for us. Indeed, we may never see them at all.
One writer told of a time when he tried to communicate with his father. He failed for an old reason. His father had an inability to listen to what he said. “He could never empty or silence his own mind to make room for an alien thought,” said the writer.2
So, it is with many of us. Our minds are noisy with self-concern until little else can penetrate. But the glimpses of heaven come in those moments when we are startled into self-forgetfulness. When our attention and desire are totally focused on something outside for a few minutes, then joy steals quietly in. The focus may be another person, a great work, a sudden observation—indeed, anything that removes us from center stage and pulls us out of ourselves.
That is why the Olympics thrill us. The runner who forgets his pain in the joy of racing the wind, the gymnast who forgets her fear as she mounts the balance beam. They are reminders that some of us can fly on wings of excellence and joy when something fills our hearts besides ourselves.
The Lord has said that we’ll find ourselves by losing ourselves. The paradox is true. Happiness will flee the shrine that we build to our own self-interest.
1 As quoted in Lewis, C.S., Surprised by Joy, Fontana Books, p. 184.
2 lbid., p. 148.
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August 12, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,869