The Thief of Joy!

Recently my husband and I purchased a new King Sized bed. We also updated all our bed linen to give me the bed that I had been dreaming of. White linen, colour coordinated cushions, incredible cable knit throw to artfully arrange to look as though it was casually thrown across the bed, the entire works.

Every time I walked into our room, I felt such pure joy. I genuinely wanted to spend time relaxing in the the room, it gave me that air b and b feeling. It felt special, like a sanctuary. The way I had always wanted our room to feel.

The feeling lasted for about two weeks. We have pets, three cats and a giant black lab who seems to leave hair wherever she goes. Every time I walked into my room and saw my beautiful new bedding, I started to worry about it getting ruined with black dog hair, so I came up with a genius plan. I covered it up with an old, blue felt blanket that the dog could destroy.

Protected but Hidden

My beautiful bedding was protected and looked after. It was also completely hidden from view. Every single time I walked into the room, I looked at it and felt disappointment. It seems like such a small thing. But after a year of this, apparently it takes me a little while to think these things through, It suddenly occurred to me that the only person stealing my joy was me. I was the one causing the disappointment and I had full control.

I chose right there and there to take off the blue cover. Is the white cover getting some dog hair on it, yes. Does it matter no, it doesn’t. The sense of joy is back, I walk into my room and it feels restful and peaceful again. Do we let the cats in the room? No, I have some limits.

Since that moment, I have started looking around my house and thinking about what else I can remove. There are plenty of situations life that threaten to suck the joy out of us that we can’t control, but sometimes, we do it to ourselves. We have full control of that and we can make small changes to take back control in those situations.

Lorrene McClymont is a writer and photographer from the Barossa Valley in South Australia

You can connect with her on Instagram