Joy

wet day, joyful creature

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children's letters - sometimes very hastily - but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote: 'Dear Jim: I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it; he loved it; he ate it."

~ Maurice Sendak

Tara Brach (whose treasure chest of a website I found via Sarah, only to realise Tara is the author of Radical Acceptance, a book my counsellor lent me seven years ago - I have been meaning to get my own copy ever since) quoted this in her talk "Committing to Joy" shortly after Maurice Sendak's death last year, and I keep thinking and smiling about it. There is so much to learn from children and animals when it comes to just being in the moment - though I probably wouldn't go as far as eating paper!

And I love the synchronicity here: that these days working on illustrations fills me with so much joy and with the sense that this is where I belong.