I've always liked the French expression "joie de vivre," or, in English, "joy of living." According to Wikipedia, this expression can describe an overall enjoyment of life and all its facets and activities, an optimism and thankfulness. My niece, Katelyn, shown above, relishes eating, even as she works out some of the technicalities of actually getting the food into (rather than near) her mouth.I think there's a lesson there for those of us with a few more years behind us. We might not get excited by the same things our infant selves found joy-inspiring--but there is much to relish that we may sometimes miss.
I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project yesterday. Interestingly enough, this erudite scholar, who is, by virtue of study and time, more sophisticated than my niece by a longshot (it's not her fault, since she's just turned one-year-old), shares an important quality with her: he finds great joy in life, and, in his case, finds joy in the littlest things that make up life--our DNA.
Dr. Collins finds joy in having been the leader who helped a team find the very map of our DNA, the blueprint of chromosomes we all share, the building blocks that make us all 99.9% the same regardless of race or ethnicity.
At the same time, he finds his faith enriched by such discovery. He finds that mapping the "little things" common to each of us enriches us as individuals rather than making us all just so much cellular matter.
