Does It Still Spark Joy?

     Does it spark joy? This is the question, they say, that you should ask yourself when decluttering and throwing old things away. You hold the thing that you don’t use anymore and you’re thinking of throwing away, and see if it still sparks joy. If it does give you even the tiniest bit of joy, you should keep it. If it doesn’t, then, hurl it to the nearest trash can.

     So yesterday, I was thinking, while the issue of this government's intention of lowering the criminal liability age to nine raged on, what if you want to declutter this government? This government which foremost policies are to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and to jail everyone who doesn’t agree with them  and to pamper, cuddle and protect plunderers and criminals. This government, if you’d try to throw away all the trash in it, would probably be totally emptied, no one would be left, because nothing in it sparks joy.

     Anyway,a little incident happened in our family that indeed sparked joy. Four days ago, my three year old nephew was in our house again, and while he was playing with his toys, he looked around, and failing to see what he was looking for, he turned to us and asked, “Where’s beautiful inay?,” referring to his mother. We all laughed as it was the first time we hear him say that and told him she was downstairs, and then he said, holding a much older cousin’s hand, “Go down, go down,” meaning, he wanted to go downstairs.

     And then, I sat in front of my computer and looked at the photos of somebody. And, yeah, it still sparks joy-- still quite immensely, I should say.