Art of the Joy

While deciding what elephant I would sketch for today’s prompt, I ended up getting lost for a bit watching videos of baby elephants. Their sheer joy and exuberance was intoxicating to watch as they experienced the world around them. Though we don’t actually know what an elephant is feeling precisely, since we don’t speak their language, it’s easy to observe that they approach life with quite a bit of joy. The birth of a baby elephant will cause the entire herd to blare and circle the newborn with excitement. In fact, it’s thought that an elephant’s emotional bond with its family members may actually rival our own. Since, as I said, humans don’t speak elephant, the list of things that we think brings them true joy is rather short. Their enjoyment in life is basically summed up as being with friends and family and playing games. It made me realize that when it comes to true joy in my own life, the list isn’t really much longer than that. While I encounter things that make me smile each and every day, they don’t quite bring the incredible level of delight that can be truly be known as joy. This is, as it turns out, is much rarer than it seems.