The Default Position of Joy

What has surprised me most about being a parent is not the sleepless nights or the discovery that sucking on a pacifier should be added to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, what has surprised me most is a baby's utter capacity for Joy.

Surely, like most children my daughter cries, howls, whimpers, grunts, and gets fussy. However these are all intermittent against a backdrop of pure joy. I am by no means a child expert (in fact it is the opposite everything is entirely new), but it seems to me that happiness is the most complex and developed of emotions for this little one. Because she is so very new to the world she does not seem to feel (or at least make known) other feelings such as shame, acceptance, anger, courage, or any of the many other emotions that older children and adults outwardly experience.

She is tired or hungry so she simply cries, but when she is not crying her eyes smile with a deep joy and laughter. Her default position in life is joy and I only wish it will stay that way forever. It is much more difficult for adults to set our default positions in life to a place of pure happiness or wonder. Even when we are not respoding to something hurtful, we all too often subconsciously adjust our default settings to angst, anxiety, pain, or anger. For a baby, if there is no immediate hunger or exhaustion or pain what else is there but pure joy? Judaism encourages us to constantly refresh the lens with which we view the world.

Every morning we are instructed to pray Elohai Neshama She-natata Bi Tehorah Hee - The soul that You The One have given me is pure. We are reminded to reset our mental homepage from wherever it has strayed to a place of inherent joy and return to our own souls wonder of youth.