Ups and Downs: Choosing Joy
Over here at our house, things are a little up and down at the moment. One minute, I’m snuggling with my kids as my husband reads Harry Potter aloud to us. The next, I walk into the bathroom to see water all over the floor, the last dregs of the shampoo wasted, and I start yelling that whoever did this had better get their butt in here right now to clean it up. Ten minutes later, I hear laughter as the girls clean up the bathroom together and I can’t help but smiling. Ten minutes after that, I open our newspaper to news that makes me sad, mad and scared all at the same time.
The good and the bad are constantly fighting for our attention. The pain in the world only becomes more evident as we build more connections, allow and invite others to be vulnerable with us, and open ourselves up to compassion rather than indifference. There’s a lot of beauty to be found in the world, but a lot of pain, too. Some days I wonder how I’m going to hold onto my sanity in the midst of all this.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that joy is a choice. Not only that, but it’s a hard choice I have to make every single day and sometimes every single moment. In reality, I probably fail to choose joy almost all of the time. Not many people would frame me as a sunny, endlessly optimistic person. I find it difficult and often disingenuous to put on a brave face.
Which is why I’m lucky that choosing joy isn’t the same as pretending things are easy or even good. Choosing joy is simply the act of letting yourself be vulnerable to hope. Choosing joy is saying, “What is broken can be mended. What is wrong can be righted. The good in the world, with hope and hard work, can overcome the bad.” I’m the first to say that I don’t fully know if those things are true. I repeat them to myself, like a mantra, because the alternatives might be more sensible but they aren’t helpful to me. Despair comes too easily when we decide that our problems are somehow more real and more lasting than our blessings.
Because, when we think about it, most of our problems come and go, changing and shifting as we age. I know I’m not still stressing about the things I was worried about 5 years ago. Problems have a tendency to resolve themselves, or come to a head, or become so difficult that we find a way to overcome or survive. Blessings, on the other hand, are lasting. There are new things that bring me joy, but the old ones still work too. Favorite people, special places, even beloved foods all still bring me comfort in hard times.
Choosing joy is simply acknowledging that. It’s remembering that we’ve overcome all the insurmountable things we’ve seen so far, one way or another. It’s believing that even as large as this fight seems, together, our community is enough to meet these challenges even if we don’t yet know how.
How are you choosing joy today?
