I often say that we are who we are because of all the experiences we have had and the meanings we have chosen to create for ourselves through those experiences. Today is a special day for me and my children. Its thirteen years since my wife Jill died of cancer at the age of 48. It's also true that you never stop grieving for and missing the person you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with. They remain an integral part of who you are for the rest of your life. Indeed, one of the  reasons I have tried to live a positive and fulfilled life since she died was to try to honour her. Had she lived she would have seen our three children grow up to become fine young people, she would have enjoyed two of them getting married and the third talking of marriage and enjoyed our grandson and the thought of twins on the way. She had that rare gift of being able to get so much enjoyment from the smallest incidents of life - like a cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit. She taught me to see the joy in the simplest of moments. Whereas I complicate life she simplified it to the essentials and enjoyed it for the sensual experience it is. She helped me see that it is the simplest of things in life that are worth living for.Generally I am able to be positive abouit most things and people often comment on my enthusiasm, energy and positivity but there is nothing positive about losing the one you loved. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself and my loss, at other times I experience intense feelings of guilt that I am alive and she is not. I tell myself that she would have wanted me to try to live my life to the full and I know she would think I had done the right thing to marry again and try to be a good step father to my three children. But I am not religious so I have no concept of her awareness being in another place and that makes me very sad sometimes. I have to comfort myself with the thought that her spirit lives on in mine and of our children. Perhaps all I am doing is really a tribute to her. 

My wife knows how I feel because she feels the same about her husband who she lost when he was only 35. We are united by a shared experience that has profoundly shaped us both.

These two pieces of music to express how I am feeling - when I am feeling melancholy I love to listen to the Chinese erhu. Jill never saw the film crounching tiger but here is some of the music from the film that really touches me. The second is Jill's favourite ever song - fields of gold by sting. The first makes me feel unbelievably sad the second reminds me of our happiness.

There is no doubt in my mind that feeling joyful helps you to tackle difficult or boring tasks.. I had a work plan that was going to help me deal with something that I didn't really want to do but had to be done. But the sun was shining so I decided to go for a walk..putting off the inevitable you might say. I walked down to the lake and as neared it there were a lot of splashes which I knew would mean fish.. so I  stood and watched and the sunlight just caught the surface in such a way that from where I stood I could see lots of fish.. Moving a few inches forward I could no longer see them. Perhaps this is a metaphor for seeing and not seeing things.. we need to put ourselves into an area with potential, we need to appreciate what we are looking for then we need the right conditions to enable us to see.

I carried on down to the woods.. the ground was all boggy after the weeks of rain we have had but the woods was alive with birdsong and a carpet of green with delicate beautiful coloured wild flowers sometimes isolated and sometimes in a carpet.. It was very uplifting and for the sake of 30mins I have come back a different person..

Where does joy feature in lifewide, lifedeep and lifelong learning?

It's a glorious Sunday morning one of those amazing, bright sunny spring mornings with a heavy dew on the grass that is so uplifting. I was reading the latest draft of the summer issue of Lifewide Magazine. Each of the articles seemed to be expressing in some way the  joy of what I was feeling and when I started to look more deeply it seemed to me that all the pieces were connected by this theme of joy but in what way is it related to lifewide learning? So where do our community members find joy?

For Anna Vartapetiance, joy was found in tackling the challenge of coming to live in the UK from another country and the joy of learning and adapting to enjoy another culture and the opportunities that living on a multicultural campus brings.

For Nick Jackson  -who 'always tries to look on the bright side of life', joy is to be found in discovering that his commitment to developing and continually trying to improve a broad range of skills and interests, is his secret of success and personal fulfilment.

For school teacher Peter Rhodes joy was in discovering a new way of engaging his pupils so that they discovered the joy in their own learning and personal achievement. Joy was also found  in the accomplishment of pupils in a primary school who created and performed a magical mystery tour assembly for their fellow pupils and teachers.

For Joevas Asare, an ambassador for lifewide education, joy comes from pursuing his passion to be a successful rap singer (called J Peace) and working with talented people in the music business to learn from them and become a better musician.

And for Harvard Professors Joe Blatt and Chris Dede joy is realised by helping to change the way education utilises the diverse range of communication  technologies  so that more students experience the rich pleasure of learning and what they call the 'joygap' is closed.

While for our featured artist, Kiboko HachiYon, his joy is realised in turning abstract ideas into images that help people recognise and celebrate the deeper meanings in life.

I began to appreciate that joy was an important part of the lives of all the people in our community who were contributing stories from their life. By contributing to the Magazine they were really sharing some of the joy in their lives and in doing so they are encouraging other people to recognise the joy in their own lives

It seems to me that joy is within us as we experience the everyday incidents of life but that it originates in achieving or trying to accomplish the things we value ....It involves feelings of happiness but happiness can be related to a transient pleasurable experience. Joy is deeper, more profound and sustained than happiness because it affects the spirit of who we are. And because it's a state of mind rather than a state of body it has the potential to continue to affect what we do because it is part of who we are and who we want to become. The sense of exuberance and empowerment that fills us seems to infect everything - as the young people in the photo are doing (a photo I love so much that I used it on the cover of my book) we literally jump for joy because the emotion affects us physically 
So perhaps joy is an achievement, an achieved state of mind that helps us see and interpret and enact our everyday experiences as we interact with the world around us. This is the lifedeep side of learning- the deeper spiritual meanings of living and being aware. I was curious to know what other people felt joy was and both my children saw it as being something deeper than mere happiness.

I googled and I was struck by how many of the websites I found that discussed joy had a religious or spiritual context. Here is one the explanations I liked.
Trying to define joy is like drinking water from one hand.  You can only capture a bit at a time.  It is more than happiness, more than contentment, more than gratitude, though they all are certainly components of joy.  Joy is a feeling, but it is also an attitude toward life. Abraham Lincoln said “most people are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”  The same could be said of joy.  Most of us are just as joyful as we decide we are going to be.

It is hard to always, and in every circumstance,  find things to appreciate, to enjoy and, even sometimes,  to find hope for the future.  There can be crushing experiences in health, employment or relationships.  What brings us through them?  It is the splashes of joy that cross our lives....In joy we find gratitude, happiness and hope for the future.  Sometimes those splashes seem random, sometimes they come from others but they lift us up.  And then we can lift others.

So I'm convinced that joy is something that relates to the lifedeep dimension of lifewide and lifelong learning

A Pinch of Joy website
http://www.apinchofjoy.com/2011/08/what-is-joy/