Welcome to The Joy Experiment

Happy April, and welcome to a tiny, month-long experiment I’m calling, The Joy Experiment. If you missed the last issue of this e-journal, you’ll find it linked below, where you can read the backstory on The Joy Experiment.

In a nutshell, each day in April, I’ll be capturing at least one small joy moment in my personal journal. Then, twice a week, I’ll share a few of those moments here in The Wild Now, along with a gentle question to help each of us open ourselves to joy hiding within our days.

I’m glad you are here, and I hope you find surprises and solace in experimenting with joy.

One caveat before we jump in. As I share moments from my journal, please keep in mind that I’m a writer at heart so how I share my joy moments is part of the joy for me. I play with words, metaphors, and the poetry of ideas.

From my journal | February 24, 2025

The mind is a green meadow.

Mine has cats and cows, both grabbing grass with their tongues, and so the grass becomes silky fur with a soft motor inside, becomes utters of milk, then cheese.

The biology of magic, I think, touching my own face made partly of yesterday’s peach.

A family of gray foxes is here, a mother, her kits wrestling, their lush tails whipping air, and when they pause, fox breath lifts from their panting mouths, fox fog, their ears pointing to the sky.

Hummingbirds lick into the tiny purses of salal, the magenta-bright salmonberry blossoms, the penduluous wild bleeding hearts edging my meadow.

Yellow-faced bumble bees in furry, black vests probe lupine, tall and violet-blue, tiny pollen scientists working their way into the far horizon. The sound is shhhhhhh and bzzzzzzz, breeze moving with the bees.

The musky scent of mud after rain is old and comforting, so strong I taste it, a mix of coin-metal and bitter roots. If you lean down, ear hovering above the mud, you can hear a trickling, a thousand tiny streams, a flowing in the stillness.

I’ve never met a hedgehog in real life, though a sweet nextdoor-friend made me one that sits, inch-high, on a counter ledge watching me make tea every morning. I want a hedgehog with me in my mind meadow. I want her prickly outer fierceness and her downy, vulnerable belly, so I’ve lured her with a cup of tea, given her a savory millipede and thimbleberries.

We talk without words. Aliveness is a language. It begins in the body, lingers in the mind.

My feet in clover are two, strange, temporary animals who want only to walk, to keep on walking.

The meadow comes along. My joy meadow. I feel tenderness, delight.

We’re here, so we’re meant to keep walking. If unable to physically walk, then reach out or up, sway then smile, keep breathing in and out—notice that—it’s the first step, step, stepping forward that even a baby can do.

Having a mind meadow is one way joy opens a path.

What does the green meadow of your mind look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, taste like?

To visit the mind’s green meadow is not an escape (think refuge), is not naive or a form of denial, is not crazy or eccentric or a waste our our precious, finite time. Though even if it were, joy says, So what?

The present. Love that word, what about you? The present of the present.

The burden comes when thoughts proliferate over time, all the projections of “If only” and “Why” pile up, presenting themselves like the news cycle, grounded in longing for something out of reach, rooted in the many faces of fear.

The same mind in its wondering can just as easily whisper, “What if?” and “Why not?” Indeed that mind let men literally bounce on the luminous moon! Think about that, the moon! There are human footprints up there!

Still, the brain likes safety, ever vigilant for what might go wrong. But, what if there is sanctuary here, in this moment, this space of time, and what could go right?

Your mind sometimes needs to override your brain, and go seek out, or better, summon forth, the stories of what’s beautiful and safe.

That’s the gift. The mind can find those stories everywhere, though it takes intention plus practice.

As my own caregiving gets harder with each devolution of my husband’s health, I readily admit, joy gets more elusive.

So, when I can’t find it around me, I go within to my minds’ green meadow, and honest-to-God, the joy is there.

As we begin our April experiment with joy, I have two questions to help you get started:

What does true inner joy look like for you?

You need to have a clear sense or personal definition of what you’re aiming to have more of in your days.

Too often people define joy as a scattering of rare, awesome life experiences, but most of our lives pass in the quiet portals between peak events.

Inner joy is much more accessible and enduring. If you can’t wrap your thinking around inner joy, then, pick something else—peace or delight or whatever simply feels like true well-being and optimism for you.

If you don’t yet have your own mind’s green meadow, what if you created one now?

Take some time now or today to close your eyes (assuming that feels safe for you) and create your own refuge place, which may or may not be a meadow. You get to choose.

Make it as fully sensory as possible, with sights, sounds, tastes, touches, and scents. Add in details. Think lush, vibrant, sensuous, or richly textured.

If you're thinking, “But Kimberley, I’m not good at visualizing,” I would say kindly, give it a try anyway, because often it’s simply that you haven’t had much encouragement or practice.

That said, some of us really aren’t wired to do much visualizing. In that case, I find most people can create their mind’s green meadow as a felt space, imagined without visual clues, the way one might dream of a loved one and not ‘see’ them but rather ‘feel’ their presence in the dream.

Comments & Community

If you feel up to sharing what ‘inner joy’ means for you and/or your experience with your mind’s green meadow, comments are incredibly welcomed.

The beauty of sharing is the ability to inspire and connect with others, while helping yourself stay on track by, in a sense, documenting your process and progress. I’d love to see a small community blossom out of our Joy Experiment.

Connections with others, especially kindred spirits on similar journeys, is a key ingredient for well-being and, yes, inner joy. It’s not only my belief, but also what study after study shows.

No pressure, just an invitation. We’ll see how this month unfolds. Namaste.