Finding Joy
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of joy; what it means and how to reach optimum satisfaction with one’s life. Because I am still in my post-graduate, pandemic limbo, navigating happiness has been challenging for me.
I previously measured happiness in terms of accomplishments. When I was winning, I was happy; conditioned into relying on external validation and gold stars, then deriving my identity from that.
It wasn’t until a lengthy period of losses that my sense of self was called into question. I wondered, was I even good at anything at all? Did I have poor work ethic and this was the result? Surely, everyone had been lying to me this whole time and I wasn’t, in fact, smart. I didn’t understand why people with limited mental acuity were getting accepted to Stanford and Brown, while I’d been bending over backwards since kindergarten and was waitlisted practically everywhere. And because I doubted myself—the first time in my life that my confidence wavered—I was unhappy.
Obviously I am far enough removed from this to realize that I was being a typical adolescent. I was scared. My life wasn’t going as planned and in response I flipped out—as if things wouldn’t evolve for the better—while also maintaining the false belief that I was the only person on planet Earth this had ever happened to.
The reason I dredge all this up is because after high school, I fell into a very ugly pattern: I stopped letting myself feel joy. Real, true joy. I didn’t want, didn’t even allow myself to, because wanting meant I had something to lose. I didn’t get excited about opportunities, squashing each possibility before it had a chance to bloom. I never took risks, and on the off chance that I did, I half-assed my way through so that it wouldn’t matter when I got that rejection. It was almost as if I was scared to experience anything: to lose, to fail, to have my heart broken and later repaired. With that avoidance of the bad, I opted out of the good.
I have had a roster of teachers, mentors, and friends all tell me the same thing: that I hold myself back. I thought it was a bullshit notion until I had a revelation, becoming aware of my self-sabotaging behavior. What prompted my unhappiness was my overall lack of participation in the game of life. My friends were running amok making mistakes and discovering themselves, while I was on the margins too terrified to do anything except listen to their problems, pretending to understand and commiserate.
After I moved, things changed. I started saying yes to literally everything. It didn’t matter how tired I was or how much crap I had to get done the next day, I always said yes. Even if I didn’t necessarily want to—drinks with women who made me feel inadequate, a housewarming in which I knew exactly one other guest, dates with boys I felt so-so about—I still did it. I learned what I liked and didn’t like. I learned when to say no. I learned when to ask for help. I learned to want again, to strive for what I knew I was more than capable of achieving. I stopped hiding behind the excuse that I needed to keep my ass in the house and write (sometimes I did need to keep my ass in the house and write, but that’s neither here nor there). Through all of it, I slowly but surely found what I didn’t know I was looking for.
The Latest:
The garlic spread from Trader Joe’s. Trust me on this one.
Wearing a lot of white for late spring/early summer.
Lady Bird (2017), specifically the phone call the titular character has with her mother in the final scene and the feeling of driving through your hometown.
Lia Ices, whose voice reminds me of Joy Williams and is also perfect for listening while writing.
1. Georgia O'Keeffe, "Blue II," (1916). 2. Georgia O'Keeffe, "No.22 - Special," (1916-1917). “Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn’t be big enough to say it on.” —Georgia O’Keeffe
Within the last two weeks, I’ve been leaning into old habits. Isolating myself and using academia as a form of retreat, symptoms of the inevitable June melancholia that seems to seep into earlier months. Caught between feeling twenty-three years old and twelve years old and a hundred years old. The inside of my brain was starting to feel like a disorganized filing cabinet so I’m trying to focus on the little joys, appreciating them in their simplicity: calling my best friend, watching a movie, going for a long walk. Ergo, practicing solitude without becoming a hermit.
Joy can manifest through accomplishments. It can be going out every weekend or shooting your shot with a guy you know you’ll never see again. It can be making a new friend or reconnecting with an old one. It can be the last page of a riveting novel. It can be writing the first one.
We’re living in a very weird time and it has become commonplace to alienate oneself when not feeling like we are at our best. I think a major factor in finding joy is learning the value of acceptance. Accepting each version of ourselves and of others, and that while we cannot control everything, we can control our actions and reactions. For me, joy began with reflection and ultimately led to so much more. I’m still learning though.
You did not just make me tear up at 8 in the morning!! I love this and you! I felt this article on so many levels. I'm still trying to find the balance between learning to be alone and *not* completely isolating myself. This was such a breathtaking read <3