Joie de Vivre

I don't know much about the joy of living.  I recall reading in Two Years Before the Mast about a party in Mexican California where a girl would sneak up behind a boy she liked and break an egg over his head. (It wasn't a regular egg, but one filled with cologne water.) And a boy would sneak up behind a girl he liked and put his sombrero over her head.  Those people knew how to live!

I guess that here in the well-off Protestant developed world we associate joie de vivre with the poorer, more Catholic societies to the south.  Places like Rio de Janeiro at Mardi Gras time.  People express their joie de vivre on weekends and holidays, then go back to scratching out a living on weekdays. (Here in North America we also have New Orleans.)

But maybe you can find it closer to home if you look harder.  In my neighbourhood, for one weekend in July they have the Hispanic-centred Salsa on St. Clair street festival, with the street closed to traffic.  It's very noisy, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for living in an interesting neighbourhood.