From my own junior high and high school experience...I remember playing the infamous game of dodge ball. I was really good at staying in the back and ducking, jumping and using fast reflexes to avoid the bigger kids throws. After getting to be the last player a couple games in a row I remember how a disgusted player from my own team told me I wasn't a real player. Well I was a real player--but not 100% "all in" might be a better description.
--Although dodge ball isn't my life--I draw a parallel to how I played it....
I have discovered a truth about how I live and how I engage JOY. I have watched many other people and I have noticed some similarities in talking with others about how they handle "the good times" or periods of joy in their lives.
Almost every time without fail I don't live out--feeling the full 100% of Joy that's been given and is standing face to face with me.
At first when I realized this I thought about how and why--and what's this about? I think I handle it like dodge ball, jumping away from the full effects, ducking, and shielding it away with other balls to stay alive in the game of life--never taking that head on shot.
Well it's been going on for a while and here's the deal...I believe that if I don't fully go all in with the joy--then somehow the difficult times when they come again (--and they come again for all of us) I will also not get both barrels of that blast straight on--avoid a direct head on shot. Somehow I will get a diminished or reduced life changing event.
"It's a deal with the devil" as Brene Brown writes in her book "Rising Strong"--"and the devil never pays...when we deny our stories and disengage from the emotion--it means choosing to live our lives in the dark. "
The imagery of darkness is something I know all too well...Sometimes I feel like Bane in the movie--The Dark Knight Rises--comparing my level of darkness by quoting "you merely befriended the darkness---....I was born in it."
However--When we decide to own our own stories and live our truth, we bring light to the darkness.
That doesn't mean it's easy street--even long after naming it aloud--but it does mean we get to live transparent warts and all. It does mean putting myself out there--and fully living in the joy of the moment...with no waiting for the other shoe to drop mentality...just living in the now--breathing and taking it all in. Whatever this holiday season brings and moving forward I want to be courageous enough to really live "all in."
I don't want to dodge real joy a minute longer when it presents itself...I want to take in every ounce as a gift knowing it is a great gift that can't protect me from future pain--it's just today's gift.
When I think about living this way, I think about Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting---a young man with an extended smart answer for everything except not being able to commit "all in" with his emotions...
In the final scene Ben Afleck shows up to pick up his friend for work---but he's not there....he is embracing joy in all of it's uncertainty for tomorrow as he drives across the country to chase after a woman he loves..."ALL IN"
