Surprised by Joy

Ever since I was a little girl, people have commented on my joyfulness.

Not because I have lived an easy life.

Not because I see the world through rose-colored glasses.

Joy has simply always been the way I have met the world—for reasons I never fully understood until I recently traveled to Scotland.

It is not denial.

It is not perpetual happiness.

It is a posture of openness that has always come naturally to me.

A willingness to smile, to laugh, and to be surprised by wonder.

Perhaps that is why, nine years ago today, when I received the phone call that Scott had been killed, I believed I had lost not only the love of my life...

I believed I had lost myself.

I did not think I would ever know joy again.

And yet, if there is one thing these past nine years have taught me, it is this:

Perhaps joy is not the opposite of grief.

Perhaps it is grief’s highest transmutation—the taste love acquires after it discovers that death cannot end relationship.

What if?

The title of this essay is borrowed.

In 1814, William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet entitled Surprised by Joy after the death of his beloved daughter, Catherine.

He describes one breathtaking instant when something delightful catches his attention and, without thinking, instinctively turns to share it with the person he loves most.

Only to remember.

She is gone.

The surprise is not merely the joy.

The surprise is that joy had dared to visit him at all.

More than a century later, C.S. Lewis borrowed those same words for the title of his spiritual autobiography.

For Lewis, Joy was not happiness.

It was longing.

A deep homesickness for something beyond this visible world.

For years I admired both men.

I never imagined I would someday find myself standing quietly between them.

Wordsworth taught me grief.

Lewis taught me longing.

Scott taught me joy.

In the months after Scott died, I became fascinated by something I was learning from neuroscience.

A thought creates an emotion.

An emotion releases chemistry.

That chemistry washes through the brain and every cell of the body.

I would think,

“Scott was hit by a truck and killed.”

And without realizing it...

I would pour myself another grief shot.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Not because I wanted to.

Because the love inside me was searching for someone it could no longer see.

Nine years ago, I believed grief would become the chemistry of the rest of my life.

Scott had other plans.

Patiently...

Joyfully...

One impossible moment at a time...

He began changing the recipe.

Little by little, he taught me that although the nervous system can become addicted to grief...

The soul remembers another vintage.

During one meditation, after I had learned how to recognize Scott’s presence, he said something I have never forgotten.

“There is no quicker way to intoxication than joy.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

Not intellectually.

I knew it in my knower.

It would be years before I appreciated how perfectly Scott had chosen those words.

After all...

He had been a bartender.

He understood intoxication.

But from beyond the veil, he was no longer inviting me to escape reality.

He was inviting me to participate in a Greater Reality than I had previously imagined.

If you are going to become intoxicated by anything...

Become intoxicated by wonder.

Become intoxicated by gratitude.

Become intoxicated by joy.

For the past nine years, Scott has tended a different kind of bar.

His favorite libation is Joy.

And every so often, when I least expect it...

He quietly slides another JOY shot across the counter between worlds.

I have learned never to refuse it.

Just before this anniversary, I traveled to Scotland—the home country of my ancestors.

It was, in many ways, a pilgrimage.

My great-grandmother, Anna Smith, left Edinburgh when she was only ten years old. Like so many immigrant families, much was lost over the generations.

Stories faded.

Accents disappeared.

Even our family tartan vanished into history.

I thought I was traveling to discover where I came from.

Instead...

I discovered something I may have been carrying all along.

Everywhere I went I encountered people who were quick to laugh...

Quicker to smile...

Ready with a story...

Ready to welcome a stranger.

I wasn’t surprised because Scotland was joyful in spite of its history.

I was surprised because joy seemed woven into its history.

Not as denial.

Not as optimism.

As resilience.

As hospitality.

As a people who somehow learned that laughter does not erase sorrow—

It keeps sorrow from having the final word.

Standing among them, I wondered...

Could joy itself be part of my Scottish inheritance?

Not my family tartan.

Something older.

Something woven into the character of a people.

And perhaps...woven into me?

While I was in Paisley, I learned the story of the Sma’ Shot.

A tiny hidden thread woven into every magnificent Paisley shawl.

Invisible.

Yet essential.

Without it, the cloth would eventually come apart.

Because it could not be seen, the manufacturers refused to pay the weavers for weaving it.

How very human.

We overlook the very things holding our lives together.

As I listened to the story, I wondered if joy is the Sma’ Shot of a human life.

The hidden thread.

Almost invisible.

Rarely celebrated.

Quietly holding everything together.

Scotland gave me another beautiful metaphor.

Whisky makers speak of The Angel’s Share.

As whisky slowly matures inside oak barrels, a small portion naturally evaporates.

The distillers smile and say,

“That part belongs to the angels.”

Scott was the one who first taught me about the Angel’s Share.

And now I couldn’t help wondering...

If the Angel’s Share is what slowly rises toward heaven...

Perhaps the JOY shots are what quietly condense back to earth.

Perhaps the Angel’s Share goes up...

And Scott’s Share comes down.

People often ask whether my work is really about proving that consciousness survives death.

It isn’t.

That is an interesting question.

But it is not the most interesting question.

The better question is this:

What kind of life becomes possible if relationship continues on both sides of physical death?

That question has quietly become the work of my life.

Because if relationship continues...

Then perhaps joy is no longer merely an emotion.

Perhaps joy becomes a way of participating in the Greater Reality.

Years ago, while teaching, Scott gave me another little realization.

JOY.

Just.

Open.

Yourself.

Perhaps joy is not something we manufacture.

Perhaps it is what naturally appears when we stop defending ourselves against wonder.

People often ask me why signs matter.

Why synchronicities matter.

Why I continue inviting people to notice the impossible little moments.

Not to prove survival.

Not even to reduce grief.

But because every sign is, in a sense...

Another JOY shot.

A tiny sacred libation.

Poured from one octave of consciousness...

Into another.

Nine years ago today, I believed I had lost joy forever.

Instead...

I was slowly being reintroduced to it.

By a nineteenth-century poet who gave language to grief.

By C.S. Lewis, who gave language to longing.

By Scotland, which reminded me that laughter can become a form of resilience.

By hidden threads woven into Paisley cloth.

By the Angel’s Share.

And most of all...

By a bartender.

Who, from somewhere just beyond my ordinary sight, has spent the last nine years quietly pouring JOY shots across the veil.

One after another.

Until one day I looked up, standing among smiling Scots whose laughter seemed woven into the fabric of the land itself, and realized something I never imagined possible.

Somewhere along the way, Scott didn’t simply help me find joy again.

He helped me find myself again.

I had not betrayed my grief.

I had become intoxicated by joy.

Perhaps that is the greatest surprise of all.

Grief never asked me to stop loving Scott.

It asked me to learn a new way to love him.

And joy became the language we found together...

One JOY shot at a time.

One Final Invitation...

If, somewhere along your own journey, someone you love has crossed the veil before you...

Perhaps today...

Belly up to the bar.

Ask them to pour you a JOY shot.

Then...

Sit quietly.

Smile.

Pay attention.

Because they may not serve it the way you expect.

It might arrive as a memory.

A feather.

A dream.

A stranger.

A synchronicity.

A Scottish laugh.

Or simply...

A moment when your heart unexpectedly feels lighter than it did yesterday.

Don’t dismiss it.

Simply smile...

Raise your glass...

Whisper,

“Slàinte.”

And receive it.

You may be surprised by what arrives.

Or perhaps...

You may simply find yourself...

Surprised by Joy.

In-JOY,

Cheryl A. Page

Author’s Note

If you’re reading this while carrying fresh grief, I want to offer you one small kindness.

Please don’t measure your journey against mine.

There is no timetable for the heart.

This reflection was written nine years after Scott’s passing ...not because it took nine years to write...But because it took nine years to become true.

P.S. Below, I’ve included William Wordsworth’s Surprised by Joy from an early nineteenth-century printing. I love that a previous reader couldn’t resist leaving traces of their own encounter with these words. We are all, in our own way, writing in the margins of those who came before us.

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