I used to think joy was supposed to be exciting.
The kind of feeling that makes you laugh out loud, take a picture, call someone over to see, or say, “Look! Look at that!”
There has certainly been plenty of that behind the puddle.
The first time I noticed Stella or Stanley standing along the edge.
The first time Pinecone appeared.
Finding Shelly crossing the puddle.
Watching baby geese and mallards arrive and trying to figure out which little family belonged to whom.
Those moments still make me smile.
But something has changed.
Now when I look out and see a familiar goose grazing in the yard, I don’t necessarily reach for my phone.
Sometimes I just notice.
There you are.
When Pinecone is somewhere near the white pine, it doesn’t feel like a discovery anymore.
It feels more like seeing a neighbor.
The birds gather at the feeders and I recognize some of their routines. The mallards are bigger now. The geese have grown. Even the puddle itself has become so familiar that I can look at it and know when the water is a little higher or lower without measuring anything.
None of this has become less meaningful because it is familiar.
If anything, I think I love it more.
Maybe that is something we don’t talk about enough when we talk about joy.
Joy doesn’t always stay exciting.
Sometimes it settles in.
It becomes the person whose car you recognize pulling into the driveway.
The dog sleeping in the same ridiculous position.
The chair that has become your chair.
The familiar voice on the other end of the phone.
A granddaughter walking through the door without needing to knock.
Someone sitting beside you who has sat beside you so many times that silence no longer needs to be filled.
There is joy in discovering something new.
But there is another kind of joy in knowing something well enough that its presence has become part of your life.
Maybe we overlook that kind because it doesn’t demand our attention.
It doesn’t arrive with fireworks.
It doesn’t always make a good photograph.
Sometimes it is simply the quiet recognition that something, or someone, we love is here again today.
I think that may be the joy I understand better now.
Not the joy that shouts,
“Look what happened!”
But the quieter kind that whispers,
“There you are.”
And somehow, that is enough to make an ordinary day feel a little fuller.
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