In the midst of several recent events that evoked feelings of confusion, frustration, and even despair, Sierra and I had a conversation that I’ve been thinking about a lot since. We were reflecting on our housewarming gathering the night before, which was an evening filled with laughter, good questions, the deepening of friendships old and new, and, above all, joy. It was a beautiful night shared with people we care a lot about in a place that the two of us now get to share together.
Special, yes. But with all that was going on—both in the immediate moment and more broadly—enjoying our bubble of a good evening felt odd. Even indulgent or guilt-inducing. Especially when we found ourselves tuned back into an endless stream of information, opinions, and reactions available at the simple unlocking of a phone screen.
We felt the disbelief and frustration, too, and holding them somewhat awkwardly next to happiness and laughter was a topic Sierra felt was worth exploring, and I’m very glad she did (one great perk of living together that has already revealed itself is the mere ability to wonder aloud and intentionally create conditions in which others can do the same). In today’s world, it can often seem like if one isn’t up to date on all the details or tuned into every conversation on a given subject, they don’t care enough. Being informed matters, but there’s a big difference in the energy one uses when it comes to “staying on top of things” versus “getting to the bottom of things.” At the same time, the way so much information is presented today—negative, engineered for virality, etc—might make one care less as they consume more, thinking “well, what am I to do?” Whether it’s grief, incredulity, inspiration, wonder… in my mind, they all beat apathy. A wide range of emotions offer you the chance to observe and channel them into (hopefully compassionate) action, but not caring or opting out because “there’s no point” is in many ways more dangerous than emotions that we typically label as negative (anger, disgust, etc.).
Everyone processes events, information, and subsequent emotions differently—that much is certain. What role might joy have in this process? What role might joy have when you’re overwhelmed by a sense of defeat not sure if your actions will make a “real” difference? (I think they always make a difference, even if it’s just the energy you transmit to someone sitting next to you, but the butterfly effect is a topic for another day… or several others!). We discussed a lot of things, one of them being that, in creating joy within yourself and those around you, you’re very likely working towards solving the issue that is at top of mind, however indirectly. So many of the prescriptive, seemingly technical (whether actually technological or perhaps legislative) solutions to the world’s problems cannot be implemented without an improvement in the way we communicate with, and, on somewhat of a deeper level, perceive one another. As Charles Eisenstein writes in his essay A Temple of this Earth:
The biggest crisis facing humanity today is not vaccines or their resistors; it is not infectious disease, chronic disease, overpopulation, or nuclear weapons. It is not even climate change. The biggest crisis today is a crisis of the word. It is a crisis of agreement. It is a Babelian crisis of communication. With coherency among us, no other problem would be hard to solve. As it stands, the prodigious powers of human creativity cancel each other out. The crystalline matrix of our co-creation has burst into shards. Why? It is not from lack of skill in communicating. It is from a habit of perception, a way of seeing each other that makes us less than what we are.
If you’re spending time deepening connections with other people, going beyond small talk, building trust, and fostering joy, not only are you creating conditions to have more meaningful, root-cause conversations with those people about a certain issue; you are creating a life force between the two of you that is greater in sum than it would be in more singular parts. Whichever solution-oriented call to action you subsequently choose to give your energy to, you might find you had more to give than you did before.
Later that day, I was listening to a podcast (YouTube here, Spotify here) of the Tim Ferriss Show with Jack Kornfield, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, as the guest. It’s a beautiful conversation. At one point, Tim asks Jack about what one can do as a well-intentioned person who wants to “care enough” but ends up scattering their focus in so many different directions so as to actually hinder progress or solution implementation. Jack responds beautifully:
Part of the reason, I think, as you point out, that people aren’t responding maybe as objectively as they might, is because they are overwhelmed, and there is a despair and it feels like a helplessness that sweeps over a lot of people, the problems are too big, it’s not possible… It’s not your task to fix the world. That would be hubris. “Okay. I’m Jack Kornfield, and I’m the Bodhisattva. I’ll fix it all.” Nobody’s ever done that, right? But it is your task to feel your care and to extend it to make, to put your oxygen mask on, to make something that’s safe and sacred, as best as you can around you, and then extend that with your particular gift.
Might this making of something safe and sacred involve joy? Might the extension of it also involve joy, either in oneself or in those around them? Jack later reads aloud a wonderful poem titled A Brief For The Defense by Jack Gilbert. You can read it in full here—these lines especially stood out to me:
There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.
We must risk delight. If not, where will the energy—to strengthen bonds, organize ourselves for the better, and live our solutions on the micro-scale so that they may reach the macro-scale in time—come from? As poet John Keats wrote famously,
“I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.”
In delight and joy, we are better suited to see the beauty in people and in things. To bring back a sense of sacredness that renders it impossible to so easily label another uniquely wonderful being as “other,” separate, or “over there.” Here, no action is too small or too irrelevant. How will you know when you are giving someone the extra bit of energy they need to effect a positive transformation in their life (or their family’s lives, or their community’s way of being)? You likely won’t. So why not choose joy, choose energy, choose to contribute to modes of operating that, rather than grasping for control and consolidation of power in an attempt to salvage the unsustainable, create conditions in which beauty can flourish, dissent can be met with curiosity, and problem-solving can occur beyond silos?
I’d like to end with Mudita, a term that has its roots in Sanskrit. It is often translated to something like “taking joy in the joy of others.” I love this article on Mudita by author Daisy Hernández, where she notes (in addition to the somewhat startling fact that the English language doesn’t have great words for feeling joyful about others’ joy) that delight doesn’t have to exist as separate from sorrow, fear, or despair. In other words, joy and delight don’t have to be surrounded by sunshine and rainbows (not to take anything away from sunshine and rainbows); they can be embedded in stories of redemption, hardship, transformation, and the like. Perhaps this creates a complicated delight, but a delight nonetheless.
Where can you find space to feel Mudita today—to feel the joy of joy, in yourself and others? It may feel a bit risky or maligned with what we have been conditioned to feel. But it’s a risk I hope more of us are willing to take.
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