“The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.”
~ Russell M. Nelson

Every year since my mom turned 80, my siblings and I have gathered in North Carolina in mid-October to celebrate her birthday. We continued the tradition after she passed in 2017 at the age of 98. Our celebration of her life has morphed over the years. Some of our older kids started to join us, so in recent years we’ve included all our kids and grandkids. There are over 60 of us, although of course not everyone makes it every year.

Nowadays we meet up at a family property and are often blessed with gorgeous early-fall weather, with the temps starting to cool and the leaves just beginning to turn. The property has two small cottages, a main house, a converted barn, and three ponds. Plenty of space for our multi-generational family.

We kickoff the reunion with a pizza party for the whole crowd on Friday night. On Saturday, after a short service where we honor both our parents and our ancestors in a small memorial garden, we reserve a couple of hours for a private luncheon with just siblings and spouses in the barn. After the meal, we have a brief discussion on a topic designed to help us know each other better. We conclude with a catered pasta dinner for all in the evening.

This year the lunch topic was “What activity is currently bringing you joy in your life?” I’ve mentioned before that we were brought up to be faith-filled, hardworking, and achievement-oriented. Not that we don’t have fun, but we can be a bit on the serious side, unlike many of our fun-loving, game-playing cousins (of whom we are sometimes a bit envious).

The question about joy was my contribution, an effort to keep the conversation light. I loved hearing the responses. Siblings mentioned conversations with the grandkids while driving them to school, eliciting smiles from guests while conducting tours in an art museum, making connections with perfect strangers while volunteering, attending a musical presentation of the biblical story of Daniel on a trip with an Empty Nesters group, brightening the days of older people while serving Meals on Wheels, rehabbing a downtown building to help revitalize a small town, and writing a screenplay about our parents’ courtship during WWII. (That was mine, of course).

When I told my son about our discussion, he shared a related concept he had heard about and was trying to put into practice called “buoys of joy.” The phrase was coined by Dr. Rion Zimmerman, a chiropractor in the L.A. area, a friend of my son’s friend. The idea is to keep your mood up by always ensuring that you have something out there on the horizon that you’re looking forward to—an event in the future that gives you purpose to keep paddling through the turbulent waves of today. It works especially well when you are going through a tough time: an illness, depression, family or work struggles.

“Buoys of joy” is an interesting metaphor. Buoys have been used throughout history to help guide mariners away from natural hazards like reefs and moors. In modern times the floating objects are also used to indicate the direction of boating lanes and are often set up in a series.

When life is hard, it can help to look beyond ourselves—to widen our view and focus on some future point. Having an exciting activity or event to look forward to can interrupt the flow of one tedious day after another. Even when a buoy of joy seems far away, it’s floating out there as a beacon to help guide our way.

If we take the time to think about what brings us joy—time with kids or grandkids, lunch with friends, a new hiking trail we want to explore, a performance by our favorite band—and schedule them frequently enough that we can always see the next one on the horizon, it will make the time pass more quickly. Then our happy memories of the event can sustain us until it’s time for another exciting activity.

Navigating from one buoy of joy to the next can keep us safe, psychologically speaking, from the hazards of feeling overwhelmed and hopeless.

No matter what you’re going through, even when the waters are really rough, you can start to chart your own course toward happiness by creating some buoys of joy and keeping them in view.

Affectionately,

Elaine