Episode 9 of the Make Saints podcast: Joy

Joy – this shouldn’t be a hard thing to talk about. But strangely it is. And I want to change that.

But first, let’s work through why joy, joy is what it is.

Joy. Joy. Joy.

Why do I keep saying the word? Because we never use this word, joy and I’m going to keep saying this word, joy, until we get used to it.

Joy. Nobody says joy. We say happy or ecstatic or vibing. Nobody talks about Joy.

Which, I’ve gotta say, makes me feel bad since my Grandma’s name was Joy. And so is the main character from Inside Out. But that isn’t why we don’t say it. Or why it matters.

Joy is not a word we say because it describes something we don’t want to think about.

Joy, like happy, isn’t something you are.

Joy is something you experience. 

It is something you can be full of.

And this confusion fuels our relative animosity toward all things joyful.

Now I know some of you might be saying “Hold the phone. I don’t feel animosity toward joy.” Fine, you’re hearing my generalized statement about our cultural preference for dour seriousness and systematized happiness at pre-approved moments to be some kind of hyperbolic stereotype about you personally. I don’t begrudge you at all. I’m taking my own words a little personally myself. But I suggest we not jump to the conclusion when we’ve barely begun.

Let me at least suggest that we must have some animosity toward joy primarily because we’re afraid to use the word! 

And then let us remember the mix in the novels we read, movies we watch, and music we listen to is weighted far toward the serious. Name an Oscar winner for best picture that is a movie of pure joy. Now name one that hasn’t been widely panned as undeserving of the win. Or what role will certainly drive an actor into Oscar contention? Let’s just say Buddy the Elf didn’t get Will Ferrel a nomination. 

Even the amazing show, Ted Lasso had about one week of public support before all the negative critiques came to bury it for the audacity of trying to inspire us with joy.

Lest we think this is only about the arts, consider how much time is spent doom-scrolling social media, playing mindless games, or watching cable news? Now pair that with time spent seeking joy.

This isn’t just an unfair competition, it’s a wipeout. A massacre.

In spite of what we say, we loathe joy.

At least our behaviors tell us this. 

But I think this loathing is built on two false assumptions. Assumptions we make. And I have made all of my life.

Myth #1 – Joy, like happiness, is some permanent state of being.

A few years ago, my Mom told me that I was a happy kid. Which was kind of news to me. I don’t remember much about being a little kid, but I remember struggling with a lot of things from 4th grade on. A lot of melancholia. Not enough to get in the way or freak out my parents. I probably hid it well enough.

But I wasn’t just confused by the idea that I seemed to be a happy kid to my parents. I probably really was. 

What confused me was how much pressure “happy kid” felt as a way I was supposed to be.

Myth #2 – Happy is the only “good” emotion.

It reminds me of that old Meme: “the many faces of Prozac” and they are all the same smiley face. I was never on Prozac, but that sense of singular feeling, something that seems unnatural, seems akin to the pressure I felt.

A pressure that didn’t come from my parents. This was the pressure I internalized from school and church and culture: what it means to be a “good kid” was to be happy and kind. It also contrasted heavily with my peers who were obsessed with cool and mean. 

The dissonance of having to be happy when you spend all of 8th grade being called “gumbutt” by your classmates for that one time you sat in gum someone else stuck to your chair.

Both of these assumptions are dumb. And emotionally destructive.

They are not true and lead to deep harm.

And because of that, our relative unfamiliarity with Joy might be an asset.

We can do a bit of linguistic jujitsu with our minds and use joy as a contrast to happy.

If the world is trying to make happy a state of being—turning one emotion among many into some permanent state — then let us instead strive to experience joy. Joy is an emotion. It is something we experience. It is brightness that arrives in the gloom and helps us see there is hope.

It is also something we can seek and cultivate.

One of my absolute favorite quotes is from High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. And the movie was good, too. A book that illustrates this very shift in thinking. 

“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

The main character, Rob, confronts his own unhappiness with his life and he finds, over time, that what he needs most is to discover, not the secret key to unlock happiness, as if all the pain and suffering will be driven away. But that he can find joy in life and in changing his own expectations.

This is the thing about joy.

It isn’t permanent. But it also proves that the pain that we cynically expect to persist forever, isn’t permanent either. Not unless we leave it there.

Joy is something we can seek, create, influence, and encourage. We can make it show up in our lives by doing things that spark it rather than something else. 

And we needn’t silo our other emotions off and call them “bad”. We actually do need anger and sadness and disgust and even fear. We need to not have only one emotion always take the wheel. Seriously, just watch Inside Out already.

My point, and this is the most important part, is that we can change. And we can initiate that change by changing what stimulates our minds and emotions.

We can seek joy. And we can make our lives more joyful. Just by filling them with more things that spark joy and less of all that other stuff.

And maybe, if you’re still shopping for gifts, offerings that bring joy are always in season.