Smaller and Bigger Joys

It is better to have little joys than to know how transient the passing, pleasures are. When we have huge expectations from bigger joys, they come,serve and go away leaving you desiring to be filled again. When I wished to buy a bike, everyday there was excitement. I reassured myself that when I get my bike, all of life's problems will be solved. Although it has done a great deal of good, It hasn't solved much. The bike has its place but the pleasure has passed like the wind.

They leave you more empty than what you were but smaller joys give you something to live for, to fight for. They continue the various touches and interruptions of God's timely graces when we least notice or expect. While the bigger joys often are so filled with our desires, indulgences and excesses and aspirations that we thrust too much on it, too much is at stake, too much of emotional baggage.

We shudder fearing what would happen if we lose it. We are afraid if anyone will come before us and take it away or having someone to compete with. We are afraid if the ambition of the bigger joy is quashed and our time is wasted or the deadline has collapsed and everything will have a domino effect. Life is turned into an investment plan.

The big expectations may be fulfilled but often at the expense of smaller one's. All the time we are overwhelmed with the anxiety of big aspirations that we forget to stop by and smell the roses. We then fail to appreciate a cup of tea, a kiss of the breeze, a window seat, a sweet melody and a bright morning.

Our eyes are fixed on bigger and more practical things. We smile and excuse ourselves always consoling ourselves that this sacrifice is worth the pain because the bigger joy will bear more fruits than the passing consolation of the smaller joy that was offered. The smaller joys of little daily reprieves like a bus that came on time or a mysterious stroke of luck- Such things have no place in our lives. But these smaller joys change who we are.

The bigger joys may give us a larger meal. The smaller joys infuses peace and the peace may help us make do with a smaller meal. The anxeity of a bigger joy may cost us our courtesy and to forget the journey and only be concerned about the end. Whether it is a small noble thing or a get-together, a friend, an article, a little time off, showing gratitude to others, or atoning for some setbacks- everything is sacrificed. We have no time for these courtesies of 'returning gratitudes' because bigger joys have oriented our thinking and give us a clear, horse straight vision.

We assure ourselves that all will be fine when we reach our end and all the atonement can be done after our ends have met. The smaller joys remember to thank the clerk's guidance or for the taxi driver's directions. The bigger joys drowns these all and only parties in the end hoping that all that he sacrificed will reach its fruition in his final revelry