I was contacted this week by a lovely Canadian gentleman who runs a coworking space in Alberta who wants to talk to me next week about coworking, community, play, and collaboration. Fun! And how lovely to be reminded that not everyone on earth is bogged down by the political cluster-F happening in our country this week (or should I say month? year? maybe decade? I can’t decide).
Anyway, this lovely young gentleman told me he’d found my name in a blog post on Bernie DeKoven‘s website. Geez. That Bernie. He’s a peach even when he’s not trying. So, I typed my name into the deepfun.com search engine to find the post and—low and behold—there I was! Mentioned! By my friend/mentor/play guru/elder! Not just the once (which I remembered), and not just twice even, but NINE times do I show up in this treasured database of connection and fun and play and games. Bernie’s quite a writer, and, I must admit, not only when he’s writing about me. Heh heh. But I digress…
In doing this search, I came across a post called “Inimitable Joy” that includes this 2013 video of Natalie Kinsey (aka Pinky), Bernie (aka Blue), and me (aka Batman’s mama) having a playful, thinky, silly, meandering, apparently purposeless, and yet visibly getting more and more fun conversation. The last third of this video is so fun for me to watch that it made gratitude tears slide down my cheeks. I looked down to my lap during the last third of the video and found that Batman the cat had even shown up. He was curled in my lap, purring, and watching the video, too. Yes, Bernie, Nat, and I become so adorable together—so in love with each other and playing together—that cats watch us on the Internet!
Its been a rough week/month/year here. And yet thanks to this video, I remembered myself.
Oh yes, Inimitable Joy! Unique, unrepeatable, bone-deep-for-me joy. I do know how to do that. That’s what inimitable joy that feels like. I do have that inside me!
And that’s what these two have given me for years now, longer than even they know. From decades back when they were my childhood imaginary friends, to four years back when we played together via a Google+ hangout, to just this week, when I read their latest blog posts, and beyond. There are no limits to who I can be when I’m with them. No limits to who we are when we’re together. When I’m with them, I am my river self. My ocean self. My bad-ass-beyond-all-logic-and-reason self. I hold unshaken wonder and inimitable joy within me!
Once we humans taste inimitable joy like this, I suspect that it’s flat out impossible to settle for anything less for very long. Actually, I know this fully. Know it in my bones. As a poet. As a community and self-organizing groups researcher. As a community story wrangler. Coworking space holder. Neighborhood event co-inventor. Work re-inventor. Small business human. Alzheimer’s care partner. Editor. Daughter. Spouse. Friend. Cat mom.
I know that once we humans taste inimitable joy, it becomes flat out impossible to settle for anything less for very long. Because we’re bigger—and part of something bigger—than we were before. But the word suspect makes me sound so much more flexible and cool and open, don’t you think? So I’m sticking with “suspect” here…
Once we humans taste inimitable joy, I suspect it’s flat out impossible to settle for anything less for very long.
And the cool thing about humans is that we’re such connected and intuitive beings that just witnessing inimitable joy–like we demonstrate in the last third of the video in particular–is all it takes to make us stubborn as shit about claiming and reclaiming joy for ourselves and those we love.
So the politicians can fling their mud today. And their attorneys can spin their spin and go in for the win again, today. And the media can fight over who gets to show the most silencing and violence. That’s such a tiny part of the human experience: why imagine it as a bigger part of us than it is? That part of us is like a handful of sand tossed into an ocean, I think my buddy Gandhi said.
I still sit with that part of us now and then. It’s part of us too. But I know that violence and silencing is not why I’m here. I’m here to be dreaming, wandering, reflecting, welcoming, and wondering:
- How do we reclaim our inimitable joy? The deep, unique joy of living? Our birthright as earthlings?
- How do we become a whole beautiful world again of kind, laughing, and playing elders? With sparkles in our eyes? Worthy of the kind, laughing, playing beings that we bring into the world? And
- How do we become so adorable again together that cats want to watch silly human videos on the Internet instead of vice versa?
When I forget, I’ll return to these humans, this silliness, and this video, and I’ll remember.
My dearest Bernie. My tree-haired, kindred wanderer Natalie.
I will remember.
So will Batman.