Recovering joy
Two months ago, I took a break from my caregiving responsibilities for elders and grandchildren, and (mostly) from the daily grind of bad news, for two once-in-a-lifetime events: The choir I sing with—the choir of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Minneapolis—traveled to London to sing services for a week at St. Paul’s, that great domed church so prominent along the Thames; then we returned to celebrate my 70th birthday, Grandpa’s 80th, and our 50th wedding anniversary with our adult children, spouses, and grandchildren, in a giant AirBnB on the shore of Lake Superior.
What joyous occasions! In London, our voices ringing in that huge space were like a beautifully wrapped gift—to the hundreds of people attending each service, and to us. At Lake Superior, adults and grandchildren gathered for six days of hiking, eating, playing, and daring to plunge into the frigid water. Joy upon joy.
Yet when I sat down to write about joy, it seemed as if those three weeks were an aberration, and that most of my life was dominated by stress. It’s no news to anyone that uncertainty, worry, and fear rumble in the background of our lives now. Anti-democratic trends, climate change, AI, and nuclear war top my background anxieties. Layered in are worries about people I love. And then there’s my chronic guilt that I’m not doing my part to help. And I began to feel that joy must be elusive and rare, overwhelmed by all this worry.
But wait, I wondered. Can my life really be so joyless, given all I’m blessed with? So I looked through my photos to remind me of the joys of normal, at-home times. There were many: Baby grandchild’s smile and her baby hugs. One grandson holding my hand, another’s big brown eyes, another’s fearless energy. Morning coffee with Grandpa. Relationships with adult children. Bird sightings; glittering icicles; our dog running, to all appearances grinning; bike rides; writing; reading.
There's more joy there!
So I’m experiencing joy, but not remembering it. What’s the disconnect? Do others have the same short circuit? And does it matter?—especially, does it matter to anyone besides me?
But I’d better pause briefly to say what I mean by “joy,” given that people use “joy” and “happiness” in ways that are near opposites—not to mention conflating them with similar emotions/dispositions/feelings such as eudaimonia, elation, bliss, and contentment. The basic question is whether “joy” or “happiness” is the settled disposition or baseline state, the other one describing the momentary sparkle on the surface. Some Christian traditions consider “joy” to be the deeper experience and a response to God, while happiness is earthly and temporary. Aristotelian philosophical tradition terms happiness—more specifically, eudaimonia—the desirable baseline state achieved by living a virtuous life. Some modern positive psychologists (but, at least per internet sleuthing, not all) split one word to get at the two ideas: Hedonic happiness is a moment-to-moment, temporary, and transient experience of joy; eudaimonic happiness involves a “deep wellbeing in which a person feels that their life has meaning and purpose.” What I’m interested in in this post is joy as a response to momentary or short-term experiences: A sunset, a grandchild’s smile, our voices ringing in St. Paul’s cathedral.
So, back to that disconnect: Partly, I’ve likely fallen victim to all-too-human negativity bias, in which negative information and experiences are more salient to us than positive information and experiences. This bias is said to have an evolutionary advantage, keeping us attuned to dangers. But it has the downside of tending to make joys less memorable than sorrows or fear. I gather from multiple recent sources (opinion pieces, magazine articles, books) that people of all ages are, like me, feeling anxiety (and exhaustion, and fear, and…) a lot of the time. Such stresses can overwhelm joy. As Grandpa puts it, they “blow out the candle.” For me, anxiety draws me inward to focus on the worry du jour, and closes off the awareness that would allow a joy-sparking circumstance to enter my consciousness. How can I experience joy if I’m not paying attention? So there’s a double whammy. I probably do feel joy less often than I might, due to anxiety and insufficient awareness. Plus when I do experience it, I’m prone to forget it. Unfortunately, there’s likely a third whammy—joylessness can become pattern. And that joyless pattern is contagious (we’re up to four).
Feeling it
How, then, to experience more joy? A typical starter list of recommendations includes practicing mindfulness, keeping a gratitude journal, disengaging from negativity, checking tendencies to perfectionism, and giving yourself positive affirmations. Christian recommendations are similar, but also include participation in prayer and worship. Another crucial recommendation is being with others—especially, accomplishing things with others, like a volunteer effort, or singing together, or completing a task. Engaging with others draws attention outward to the accomplishment, the other people, and the satisfaction of achieving whatever it is you’re working on together. Positive psychologists tell us that experiencing positive emotions like joy can also, in a virtuous circle, improve creativity, problem-solving, and mental productivity: Joy will beget joy.
Another pause: These are all great recommendations, and some can be (and have been) followed even by people suffering great hardship. But it’s important to acknowledge that people whose worries are about going hungry, where they’ll sleep, or whether they will be deported may think of joy as a luxury that can wait until their needs are met.
But back to us lucky ones who can afford the luxury: Yes, it does matter to others whether I experience joy. If I experience joy more easily, I’ll be better able to communicate it to others—joy is contagious, too. In particular, more joy, along with that extra creativity, problem-solving, and mental productivity, can improve your time and relationship with your grandchildren, so that you can better help them to grow and to love the world. Conversely, one of the very best ways to “catch” joy is to spend time with grandchildren. Their joys can be ours if we spend the time with them openly and attentively, attuned to what excites or pleases them.
I’m hoping that even as I cope with day-to-day stresses, plus those worries about difficult times that seem all too likely in coming months and years, I can hold onto that idea that I—and each of us—can spread joy abundantly. And those of us who are lucky enough can practice by sharing joy with our grandkids.