I want to use this space, as humble as it is, to share voices that have graciously given their time to show us the path to a different way of doing things.

I can’t let my life circumstances determine whether or not I’m going to celebrate the people in my life. Envy destroys connection and I won’t let it undo the work I have done to build my community.

We need people to celebrate us, to help us see how far we’ve come and how our hard work has paid off. Community can give us that. And as members of community, we can give that to others.

When I take their posts and compare myself to them, I’m breaking our connection. Because I’m putting us in competition in something that was never competitive.

We think adult means serious. So when we step back into living joyfully, we necessarily seem less adult.

I spent a lot of my 20s wondering how I could be an authentic advocate when I wasn’t even willing to live monk-like in a perpetual state of minimalist poverty, giving away every cent I ever had.

Gratitude and joy go hand in hand, and when we’re failing to choose both, it’s not a failing – it’s a signal.

Choosing joy for someone else is just shaming them into expressing only the emotions that I want to see.

In my heart of hearts, I fear that joy is a tool used to make people feel more complacent when things in their lives are seriously screwed up.

Choosing joy isn’t ignoring adversity; it’s looking at it through new eyes. It’s asking, “What is the value in this chaos and how can I nurture it?”

If I only focused on my obligations, I would never have time for joy. I must choose it, and with that I must choose to risk dropping one of the many balls I try to keep in the air. I must choose to trust that those things will not break.

If choosing joy is so important, and certainly more fun, than not choosing it, why do we need to make signs reminding us to?

I kept asking myself, “Do we just exist to pour ourselves out to keep these communities going? Or are we going about it wrong and not requiring the communities to enrich the lives of the people in them?”

When we try to practice compassion consistently, we are going to screw up at some point. It’s just a numbers game.

I’m realizing for the first time in my life that the work that I’ve been doing to build connections, while enriching and bolstering in good times, is absolutely essential in bad times.

Even if I understand that compassion doesn’t mean fixing problems, but rather helping how I can, there is a limit to the help one person can give.

Part of appreciating differences is realizing that I don’t know what’s best for them. Maybe they don’t either but they get to be the expert in their own lives.

The enemy of compassion is indifference. Not mistakes or even malice. It’s the sense that there is too much pain for our effort to matter.

I don’t even want to be around my own sadness.