Joy Is Not A Loan To Be Repaid

The house is quiet now, and the joy you felt earlier has turned into a kind of dread. You are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You are convinced that if you let yourself be happy, the universe will immediately send a bill it knows you cannot pay. So you brace yourself.

You tighten your chest against the good moment, trying to preempt the pain you know is coming. But listen — the light does not operate on a system of debt.

It does not give you a gift today so it can take something else tomorrow. There was a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off.

He did not wait to see if the son deserved it. He did not calculate the cost of the robe or the feast.

He ran. Before the apology, before the speech — he ran.

The light is like that. It gives because it is full, not because it is trading.

Your joy is not a loan. It is not a trap.

It is the natural state of the child who has come home. You do not have to pay for the light that is already inside you.