Things I’ve been loving

Let's talk about joy (and sorrow)

Hello my dears,

Today I thought I’d do another edition of “things I’ve been loving,” where I share random stuff that has been bringing me joy lately. Actually, I take that back. To be honest, none of the things/books/practices/recipes/etc. that you’ll find below are what really bring me joy (although perhaps they help point me towards it). While they have brought me a bit of pleasure, or entertainment, or nourishment, they don’t matter in any real sense. What actually brings me joy is far deeper, and it’s intangible.

This might feel like the wrong time to talk about joy, in the wake of last week’s wildfires, not to mention the continued atrocities in the Ukraine and Gaza, but perhaps it’s exactly the right time, in that, there’s never a wrong time. I recently started reading the book, Inciting Joy, by Ross Gay (which is included in my list below), and in the first chapter he states:

But it strikes me as a particularly dangerous fantasy—by which I also mean it is sad, so goddamn sad—that because we often think of joy as meaning “without pain,” or “without sorrow”—which, to reiterate, our consumer culture has us believing is a state of being that we could buy—not only is it sometimes considered “unserious” or frivolous to talk about joy (i.e. But there’s so much pain in the world!), but this definition also suggests that someone might be able to live without—or maybe a more accurate phrase is free of—heartbreak or sorrow. Which I’m pretty sure you only get to do if you have no relationships, love nothing, are a sociopath, and maybe, if you’re enlightened. I don’t know about you, but I check none of these boxes.

But what happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another?

We live in painful times. Sorrow is everywhere, and my heart wrenches with it. But joy is everywhere too. Joy exists even amidst pain and heartbreak. She’s there, like a glimmer of light, just waiting to be invited in. Sometimes Joy shows up as a split second of beauty, or as a shower of tears that softens into delicious surrender, or in the eyes of a dog, or in the clouds being all puffy and proud in the sky, or in the smell of melting butter. In the list below I don’t include waking up on Saturday morning to see snowflakes swirling in a languid dance outside my window. I don’t mention watching a stranger break into laughter with a supermarket employee, which spread down the line of shoppers like a string of lights turning on. I failed to include the tears that burned my eyes and clenched my heart as I read a poem my 10-year-old wrote about peace.

Those are the real joys.

Of course, it’s far, far easier to invite joy when we’re safe, sheltered and fed. These aren’t privileges to take lightly—in fact, more than ever, this is a time to root ourselves in deep gratitude for the privileges we have, and to help those who are in need.

Even when all of our needs are met, however, sometimes (maybe often) we close ourselves off from joy. It can feel comfortable or even good to live within a wall of armor or anger or fear or hatred.

What would happen if we opened ourselves to Joy more often? What if we committed, each day, to inviting Joy in, softening towards her even when our hearts are breaking?

Gay goes on to state at the end of the chapter:

And though attending to what we hate in common is too often all the rage (and it happens to also be very big business), noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive. It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.

Joy gets us to love.

This week, my invitation is to invite more joy, even if it’s in the smallest of ways, trusting that it will lead us to a deeper love both for ourselves and for others. Let’s invite joy to unite us, helping us to survive these times with more grace, connection and light.

I share the stuff below (including a kitchen game changer, a bedtime ritual, a show, a cold buster, recipes, books, and more) with a grain of salt. They don’t really matter. But I also, very seriously, would love to hear from you too. What has brought you real joy this week? And what are the things/rituals/recipes/books/shows/clothes/etc. that have made your life a bit easier or more pleasurable? Let’s share our joys and our pleasures, not as a way of denying the sorrows of the world, but as a way of lighting up our week, uniting in love.