Joy Lives Here

Yesterday I had lunch with a dear friend. We had a rich conversation that revolved around adult-children forgiving their parents as a way to re-define their relationships. I had made this difficult choice during my first college years, importantly, when I was no longer living with either parent. I shared with my friend that I did not forgive my parents to intentionally relieve myself from guilt, resentment, or another heavy feeling. Rather, I forgave my parents, because I saw more and more of myself in them.

I made some significant mistakes in my early adult life, some of which required parental support and care to correct. The more I understood life's complexity, the more I understood them as fantastic and flawed people who were doing their best. Each relationship naturally changed once we were re-introduced as friends because, after all, people change too.

Our conversation is timely for Father's Day. I maintain a close relationship with my father who is my primary source for material stability. Interestingly this year, Father's Day, and my father's 15th year gambling-free anniversary, fall within the same week. This is no coincidence--it's a meaningful outcome.

My father is very open about his gambling-addiction recovery upon reaching this milestone. I vividly remember myself as a 9-year old living a double-life like my father. I was a mild-mannered, high-achieving little girl during the day, and an anxiety-strangled, ultra-sensitive little girl at home. Our family struggled with gambling addiction, alcoholism, verbal violence, financial security, and lovelessness, while at the same time, experiencing gambling-and-alcohol free, peaceful, materially-secure, and loving lives. In our self-created, schizophrenic reality, as my parents silently suffered, so did my brother and me. It was deeply impressed onto us, typified by my brother's sickness--for about two years, every morning high-anxiety drove him to vomit before school. We never diagnosed his sickness, although, I am sure each of us easily identified with him.

My parents were finally forced to move into separate places when I was in late grade-school. The onset of this new life, paired with adolescence, overwhelmed me. I look toward myself in total disorientation, failing to recognize very little in me, my family, or the outside. Horomonal imbalance played a small part in my early teen depression compared to the belief that I was damaged in a way that could never be fixed. I shut-off; I was a ruined person from another dysfunctional family.

As I sit here, I honestly cannot describe how I left the fatalistic place where I resided, for my formative years. Somewhere along the way, I found ease in our family's cynical, self-reflective humor about ourselves. Introspective, politically-incorrect humor lit a path toward a place called joy. I'd visit it more often during and after my college years. Joy is an eclectic place. It contains everything I have known from pleasure to pain, except, it does not one guest: worry.

During yesterday's LGBTQ sangha, I mused a lot about joy. Many Buddhists and non-Buddhists lament that joy is absent from the Buddha's teachings. I have asked, like others, "why do these teachings seem so dire?" Or "why is Buddhism silent about joy?" My views have since changed because I'm discovered that Practice, itself, brings joy.

All that I can offer is that joy is sewn by presence. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction are "mental formations" that come and go. Contentment, too, is like a pond, easily changed by rain or wind, so to speak. Joy is a robust commitment in being freely here in whichever way here exists. Some say that such a commitment is closer to awakening, even a form of awakening. That's well. My intention is to stop visiting Joy for no other reason than Joy lives here.

Buddhism has offered a full understanding about joy, which mirrors how I understand joy through the Black-American tradition. We are the People who dance, sing, eat, and worship ourselves into freedom. We have known, and continue to know freedom, where none can be seen.

Today, I make the courageous choice for Joy, like my blood ancestors, and like my spiritual kinspeople.

Post Script (Mon, June 22): Both my parents immediately called me after learning about the fatal metro-train crash earlier this evening in D.C. If it was not evident from the post, I love my parents dearly. I will be also sending lovingkindness to those affected by the accident.