Dogs, cats and children remind me there’s plenty of joy in small things

By David McElroy · April 25, 2018

As I get ready for bed tonight, I feel a sense of joy and satisfaction which I didn’t feel when I left work at 5 p.m.

The last six weeks or so have been very stressful. My father’s death has intensified a lot of old hurts that haven’t gone away. It’s been difficult to deal with the flood of emotions since I’m alone and haven’t had someone to help me work things through. And I’ve been preoccupied with other issues that make it difficult to get through my work day.

But when I came home, I was greeted by some cats. Some grumpy. Some happy. All hungry.

Then I took Lucy out for some exploring in the neighborhood. Before I knew it, the painful old emotions were set aside. The stress of the day was forgotten. I just got to enjoy time alone with a beautiful creature who loves and adores me.

There are so many things in my life — and in this world — which pull me toward feeling miserable, but Lucy and the cats and the children I encounter all make me feel joy. They make me feel happy to be alive.

I don’t have the things that I need right now to make me happy and satisfied in the long run, but in spite of that, this world can be an amazing place.

There’s so much beauty and joy and delight. It’s always there, but sometimes it’s hard to notice. It’s really easy to focus on the ugly parts, especially when media have discovered they can make far more money by screaming terrible things at us and emphasizing divisions between us.

There’s an old song by Christian singer/songwriter Bob Bennett that illustrates this well. Here’s how “Madness Dancing” starts:

In the middle of this madness I am dancing
Though I’m not sure why just now
I tried to be sober, tried to be logical
But I could not stop my feet
I know I have not turned off my mind
I know there’s evil all around me
But for now, it’s outside
And I am in my room
And joy is like a crashing tide

I hate to sound like a cliche — especially when it’s so incredibly easy for me to be melancholy these days — but we do have choices. We can choose to focus on the things which make us miserable or we can find the things which give us joy — and take as much joy from those things as we possibly can.

I’m not Pollyanna. I’m not suggesting we can magically wish away unhappiness or bad life situations. I’m just saying we can choose to find joy in small things. At least sometimes. We can put ourselves as close to joy as we can get under our circumstances.

It makes me happy when I walk through the door at the end of the day and Lucy acts as though she’s the luckiest girl in the world that I’ve returned.

It makes me happy when three-legged, green-eyed Bessie wakes up from her nap and looks at me with the expectation that I’ve come to give her the dinner she wants. I need her to need me.

It makes me happy when I’m in a restaurant and the toddler at the next table is more interested in playing peek-a-boo with me than with eating her dinner. (It helps when her family thinks it’s cute and they’re not annoyed with me distracting her, of course.)

I get joy and happiness from children and dogs and cats and sunsets and the hope of looking into the eyes of love again.

I get joy from taking photos of my animal friends and of nature around me. (Just imagine how much joy I’m going to get from photographing my own children one day — if they want to cooperate.)

There’s so much ugliness in this world. There’s so much squalor and unhappiness. There’s misery everywhere.

But there’s also love. There’s hope. There’s joy.

I’m unhappy being alone tonight. I’m unhappy not having someone I love to share the day with. I’m unhappy that I’m not yet creating the things I want to be creating. I’m unhappy that I spend my days in some ways I’d rather not.

But I watched a stunning sunset Tuesday night. And I spent time outside exploring with my Lucy Wednesday night. Those things don’t change the bad things, but the joy I get from them make everything else worth enduring — and they remind me to hold onto hope that I’ll one day have the things I need.

So I thank my Lucy for bringing me joy this evening in the midst of this world’s madness.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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