Joy in a Mustard Moving Van: Untouchable Peace Beneath Life’s Unexpected Turns

At three years old, I was strapped in the passenger seat of a 1970’s mustard yellow Ryder Truck. With no car seat or modern era safety rules, my tiny legs dangled off the edge as my feet danced from side to side, hardly able to contain my excitement on our move to the Rockies.

The extreme Texas sun beamed through my window, warming my young skin. I turned my head to the left and glanced at my dad, his dark brown eyes twinkling. A gentle, surreal lightness swept through me, and I began to laugh.

This was my first memory of life—the sensation of pure, unfiltered JOY.

Roots of Joy

Dad was always full of humor, but the jokes he cracked or the sarcastic comments he made have escaped my memory. Apparently, the surface chatter was irrelevant. However, the joy I experienced beneath it began to root in my core like an ancient tree of knowledge, forging a path deep into the abyss.

Joy planted itself then, established a strong foundation in my soul, and is still alive today. Now, half a century in, joy has been present during all of life’s breath-taking heights, floating along the calm, untouchable seas, and even through my unexpected trainwreck descending into hell.

In the depths of darkness—locked away at home for too many years to count (a story for another time)—a little voice whispered, “There must be a better way to do this.” 

Slowly, my permafrown turned into subtle curiosity and excitement about leading a different kind of life. This life showed me the art of joy during doom and gloom, and eventually, I began to laugh at how ridiculous my mind had become.

Who knew joy could peek into hell, but it did.  

Where is Joy?

Real unwavering joy is not found on a treasure hunt through external experiences. We might believe it is, but just because we believe it doesn’t make it true.

Yearning to belong to a like-minded group or community sends us on a mission to find our people, those who can reassure us when we feel lost, and shower us with love and attention we lack on our own. We seek that same three-year-old “Ryder Truck feeling” in all the wrong places.

The perpetual search might spark a temporary high, cherishing the fleeting moments of joy we shared with someone else. But expecting others to provide us lifelong happiness blinds us to the personal treasure box inside ourselves.

How many times have you put all your attention on a romantic love, falling head over heels, expecting adoration to grant you lasting happiness? Inevitably, your lover shows they are human, gets angry, or puts a wrench in a perfectly good moment, and suddenly, your joyous expectations quickly dissolve.

The mind convinces us that chasing goals and achievements, planning the next exhilarating adventure, or spending time with our favorite people can flood us with unimaginable joy. The pleasure of sharing good food, great conversation, and falling over with laughter is only temporary.

These moments come and go, and after the event, joy often fades, and the world tosses us one curveball after another. When life gets messy and nothing is working, amnesia kicks in, and joy is nowhere to be found. 

We choose to wage war on reality, complain about what is happening to us, instead of accepting what IS.

Let the Outside Pull You Inward

Maybe what IS, is our ticket to real peace. Maybe resisting life’s unfoldment prevents us from seeing our true nature. Maybe that’s the mind’s stubborn role, to make everything more complicated, so we never feel what is inherently ours.

No matter the life event, the lighter side of joy CAN be accessed, but only if we let it in. We CAN soak in each moment, the positive, the negative, the in-between lulls of mundane life, you know, the yin and yang of it all.

I ask you: is it possible to use wonderful or awful events in our lives to draw our attention into the private inner world of soul exploration?

Can we feel the calm inner stillness extending in all directions?

Can we float in this unwavering sea of beauty beneath the surface, the silent treasure already there?

Living Joy

I don’t know how you experience joy, but I have always found it sitting quietly inside, where it lightens a heavy mood and the nonsense we take so seriously.

To me, joy is a vast intangible space, calmly expanding everywhere.

Joy is a place of complete contentment—a feeling of lightness, and uninterrupted peace, where the corners of our mouths turn upward as gentle laughter echoes within.

Joy is in seeing a gorgeous sunrise, full of pink and purple hues, the birds chirping in awe, singing praise for a new day, and then witnessing a thunderstorm pass through in the afternoon, with our newly planted flowers’ petals falling to the ground.

Joy is in preparing the morning coffee and smelling the bold aroma filling our kitchen, bringing a smile to our faces as we spill those infamous drops on a clean white shirt.

Joy is in cleaning the dishes we despise or wondering why our kids don’t know how to rinse a dirty bowl and place it in the dishwasher.

Joy is in listening to Fleetwood Mac and the sultry voice of Stevie, just to be interrupted by a loud, obnoxious commercial selling another erectile dysfunction pharmaceutical.

Joy is meeting the love of our life, feeling ecstatic butterflies knowing we can’t live without them, until one day, the love fades, fizzles out permanently, and we’re left wondering what happened.

Joy is packing our suitcase for the tropics to get that much-needed time away, just to sit on the runway for two hours with a bag of dry, tasteless pretzels and a screaming toddler in our ear.

Joy is watching our kids grow up, putting our heart and soul into their survival. They love our company when they are young, until eventually they know everything and want nothing to do with us.

Joy is spending time with the people we care about, doing something fun and laughing until we cry, vacationing abroad, or watching a movie on the couch, only to watch our bodies inevitably age, get ill, and leave this plane permanently for the afterlife.

Joy is always with us, through all unforeseen storms, and the trials and errors of this thing called life.

It is simply up to us to feel it.

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