Finding Joy Amidst the Losses
December can be a hard time for many people, who keenly feel their life losses at a time when they expect to feel nothing but joy and celebration. Instead of expecting holiday times to be a perpetual infusion of happiness, we should learn to identify small, fleeting moments of joy in everyday things -- a stranger's smile a surprise meeting with a friend an outrageous pair of tennis shoes finding a quote that resonates with our soul seeing a beautiful thing in a store window hearing a song that reminds us of falling in love the hummingbird unexpectedly hovering near a window and not wait for the staccato and flash of fireworks and the shushing sounds of angel wings to signal joy's arrival. For if we wait for the ruffles and flourishes to tell us it's time to take notice, we will have missed a thousand little episodes of joy. That would be a damn shame. And for those of us who write, we must...