On Joy.
Originally Published in Ardent Magazine in July of 2021. See the full magazine here.
When we think of joy, we think of the people, places, and things that bring it to us. Of all the cracks in the world made evident by the last 18 months that we've shared, the masked fragility of the human spirit is perhaps the one we should be paying the most attention to. Never before have we been forced to reckon with how close we are to breaking as both a society and the individual creatures from which it is comprised. As strong as we like to think we are, we are also imbued with a cosmic softness, the capacity of which is truly unknowable. As abysmal as it is profound, our emotional complexity is the result of evolutionary forces outside of our control. Thanks to millions of years of unintentional yet wholly strategic mutation, we are only as magnificent as we are pathetic.
Joy is alchemical, a nuanced concoction of reception and perception that floods our bodies, swirling through it like a brackish deluge. Explosive and highly addictive, for some, the onset is quick, like fever. Glacial and incredibly savory, for others, it happens more slowly and methodically. Of all the things that it can be, joy can never be static. It is, instead, amorphous and untethered, just like everything else that makes us human.
I often think back to my childhood, to the days in which my excitement couldn't be physically contained. I remember throwing the full weight of my body at my parents when they'd pick me up from daycare. I remember finding out on the last day of the second grade that my best friend and I would be in the same class the following school year. I remember how we held hands and spun in circles until the inertia of our excitement made me vomit. I remember the full-body sensation leading up to my first kiss, only dispersing to make way for confusion as I realized I actually had no idea what we were supposed to be doing with our tongues. When we're young, joy lives closer to the surface, in the folds between our facia, the part of our body that quite literally holds the rest of us in place. As we get older, it retreats inward, digging its way through the various layers of who we are until it finds something solid and stable enough to root into.
Growing up in this world, with any level of awareness, brings with it so many opportunities for grief, so many involuntary excursions into the darkness. With each enemy incursion into the sanctum in which our joy has made itself at home, we run the risk of being ruined. We're made to believe that joy is light and airy, that it exists free from the heaviness that life brings with it. I find so much in the world that brings me to my knees, so many deeply human corners of this place that we share, but my joys are neither light nor airy. They are, instead, dark and grounded, like most of my favorite songs and people. I cannot overstate the reverence that I have for all that brings light into this world, but I have to find my joy on my own. I haven't found it floating across the sky, riding a cloud like a prayer sung into the ether. My joy has been found on my hands and knees, howling into the dirt and waiting for it to howl back. I've had to dig deep, wading through the darkness with my fingers outstretched, bumping into seemingly familiar monuments to my own shadow.
Joy seems easy to explain, but the actual feeling of it defies vocabulary. It's like trying to describe a smell without comparing it to something else. Maybe it's the absence of grief and having the strength to keep my head above water for long enough not to feel like I'm drowning. Maybe it's shared belly laughter and the way that my bones open up when I dance. Maybe it's the simple softness of a shared meal in a place that feels like home or in the gasp of a lover after an unexpected orgasm. Maybe it's simply feeling ok in a world that won't stop setting itself on fire. I don't need to know what joy is to know where I find it, though I'm pretty sure it finds me. Tried and true, I am always the best version of myself when I'm out in the wild, chasing things that make me feel small. Maybe what I'm actually chasing is joy, and perhaps joy, for me, is being made to feel small in a world so massive that I have a hard time feeling like I'm a part of it at all.
Like everything we need to stay alive, joy is a natural resource, every bit at risk as our dirt, sea, and sky. As we sink further into the future, I worry that our cosmic softness will be lost, usurped by an as-of-yet unknown biological imperative. In this recent swathe of time, we may have all been forced to take pause, but the world kept spinning regardless of our confusion, a truth that I wish wasn't so. Our masked fragility, cemented into our hustle as a necessary disguise, can be a gift if we let it teach us.
I'm here to tell you to find joy in your darkness and strength in your joy because you have resilience built into your bones. I'm here to tell you that I'm proud of how deeply human you are for letting yourself feel small in a world that won't stop trying to prove how big it can be. I'm here to tell you that you are a simple and beautiful beast, in control of all that brings joy into the world.
