Joy (it's my middle name)

I dated a guy once, many many moons ago for a very short time, who told me I was delusional for looking on the bright side of life most of the time. It wasn’t reality he said.

We’d just broken up due to the extreme limitations of his dating repertoire; namely eating (but never ever potatoes, which in itself is sacrilege) and fucking. That, and the way his dreadlocks used to grease filth down through all my bed linen grossed me the fuck out.

In his favour, he did have the gruntiest of motorbikes, which thrilled me to pieces riding high-speed pillion over the Rimutakas. But there was just never enough of that and I was craving carbohydrate.

I take joy wherever I can find it, and not just because it’s my middle name. But because bitching and whinging like a victim about the things not so great in life is easy. It’s the weak man's (or woman’s) cheap way out. To amuse myself on a daily basis and make the choice to be happy is SO, SO, SO much more fun.

My crowning eureka moment, when I was catapulted forward to meet my whole new life, found me driving round a Petone roundabout - just another ordinary, everyday moment in a 30-year black dog battling lifespan. I was about to bark off down that same road, when suddenly, for no discernable reason, I thought to myself: I wonder what would happen if I purposely chose a different path?

So I concentrated on something else, some happy thought or other, rather than following a life time of embedded habit. And I kept consciously practising, until that was the behaviour defaultly ingrained. I’ve hardly looked in my rear vision mirror since (which might also account for the shocking state of my present truck).

Now, on Saturday mornings during my most-weeks ritual doing what I like to do, I often find myself thinking about joy. While I indulge in delectable finger to spine thrilling touching at Page and Blackmore's, or as the sunshine warms my back on my way to market and my favourite stall.

I don’t know his name. We don’t speak much, except for my good morning cheery hello and his out loud calculations toting up my fruit and vege. But every time without fail, he looks at me and I look at him, and he splits into the most humongous Thai-boy grin you’ve ever seen. His face completely taken over and mine responding helplessly in kind. Yes, I think of joy then too.

It makes me chuckle for the rest of the day, that for a few seconds on a Saturday morning, there are these two great grinning fucken idiots in a crowded carpark sharing a passing moment, with nothing else needing to be said or done.

My deluded reality? Yep, I’ll take that. I recommend it to everyone.