JANUARY 14, 2016 IS MORE JOY DAY.
This is my favourite not-a-real-holiday-but-should-be of the year. More Joy Day is the brainchild of a Good Person called SDW whom I met on the internet. One day, SDW decided that it was possible to move the world incrementally toward a happier place, once small act of kindness at a time. Here’s how she described it:
Awhile back, I was reading the American Idol recaps over on Televisionwithoutpity.com and I came to this paragraph, written by the recapper Jacob:
Some dick cuts you off on the highway, and you give yourself the pass to be a dick to the next five customers, and your bad mood fades by lunchtime, and you forget the dick on the highway, you forget the color of his car, you forget how he was on the phone with his ex-wife, yelling about custody of their kids, and how he never meant to cut you off in the first place, he was just distracted. Your day continues as planned, and at lunch you check your websites and read a funny recap, and you maybe laugh out loud, and you go home and watch TV. But those five guys give themselves the pass to be dicks to the next five — they’re having a bad day, so it’s okay just this once, and they’re happy again by lunch — and those twenty-five become six hundred twenty-five, and those six twenty-five become a million, and you’ve added to the sum total of anger in the world. But it works with love, too, and kindness. … Your donation is something tangible, but what it means is something altogether more powerful, and it’s that you continue to stand, and you continue to remember that you’re not alone, and with reverence for this fact, you can’t help but add to joy. Which is your entire job, from the day you’re born until the day you die: more joy.
And I could not get over the sentiment of that last line, because it’s something I’ve believed for a very long time. 2007 was tough for many people on my flist, which was so difficult to see. A lot of bad things happened to a lot of people, and I thought starting 2008 with a day dedicated to More Joy would be a good way to get a jumpstart on a better year.
So here’s my idea:
In the interest of spreading more joy, I’m proposing that a week from today, Thursday, January 10th, we each engage in one act, either here on or outside of LJ, which brings joy to another person, in the hopes that that person will spread that joy further, and exponentially onward.
Some ideas I had of things we could do:
…. Offer to donate five dollars to the charity of someone’s choice. Send flowers to an online friend in a different city. Buy someone you know online a present. Or a virtual present. Plant a tree or a flower in someone’s honor and take a picture of it and post it to your LJ. When somebody cuts you off at work, wish them well and hope they get where they’re going safely. Make somebody a friendship bracelet. Or a construction paper heart. Call someone you love and tell them so. Or anything else you can think of!
I am in love with this idea, and have been taking part in More Joy Day since it’s inception. If you take part, you can tweet about it using the hashtag #MoreJoyDay. Spread the word! Check out the tag tomorrow and be reminded that the human race isn’t just here to make plastic (viz. George Carlin).
A small thing can make someone’s day. Just spending a moment of your time thinking about someone in order to do a small thing adds to the net thoughtfulness and caring in the world.