Why So Serious?: The Vulnerability of Joy
One of our recent quarantine projects was to paint the ugly grey pavers in our garden. We’re too cheap to buy the nice looking ones but after a few months, I figured surely we could do something to spruce them up? So I looked around our house and found some old paint and ordered some stencils and viola! I’d hoped the girls would be interested in helping and they were…for about 5 minutes. Instead, I got to sit outside painting for a few hours, which was, honestly, a nice break.
The stencils I ordered were of the “Live, Laugh, Love” variety, a dozen little sayings that gave me a chuckle here and there. Not all of them were for me, like the one about the “sea setting you free” or “loving pretty things and clever words.” Not my jam. But over and over, a theme emerged. Stencil after stencil encouraged us to choose joy, look at the bright side, see the silver lining, or embrace the good. Obviously, as a mass marketed item, these were popular sentiments. Reminders to choose joy.
If choosing joy is so important, and certainly more fun, than not choosing it, why do we need to make signs reminding us to? Why do we have to help each other remember? Why is it so easy to fail to take the joyful path?
It seems our natural state is to focus on the bad. Our brains like to identify threats, stay vigilant, and forget about the good things that no longer need our attention. When we do things that make us joyful, we’re also usually opening ourselves to criticism, failure, and disappointment. In order to embrace any given moment, we have to put aside:
our fear of looking stupid
our preoccupation with details/plans
our awareness of being judged by others
our disappointment in imperfection (either ours or others’)
our need to define ourselves as what we don’t like (rather than what we do)
The alternative to joy is the security of looking smart, feeling competent, responding to judgment, pursuing perfection, and being the person we believe we should be. Joy is a wide-open place where failure and judgment can come from all sides. It feels safe to assume everything is bad because you’ll never be disappointed.
But you’ll also never be delighted. So consider reminding yourself today: joy is worth the vulnerability. Disappointment, embarrassment, and imperfection are prices well worth paying for a joyful life.
