I need to talk about joy. I need to feel it; so many of us need to feel it.

 

Yet it feels a little weird to talk about joy when such a consequential election is only 9 days away. It’s an election that feels, no, that we know can mean the difference between creating a positive future or losing our right to a positive future; to losing our health care, seeing the destruction of our natural environment, and the loss of the ability for too many of us to achieve a livable income. And when we’re daily slapped in the face with a level of corruption and cruelty from our government that was in all probability never witnessed before in this country.

 

I’ve thought and written about this before. We need joy even when inundated with fear and sorrow, or maybe especially when so inundated. The emotion has been so twisted and suppressed by DT’s constant and chaotic assaults on almost every aspect of our lives. He not only started a capricious and malignant war against Iran—he started a war within our nation and in ourselves. A wall of hate isolates too many from all others, while a cloud of chaos obscures and disconnects us from our own needs and from our communion with others and our world.

 

And the bad rep that contentment and happiness have traditionally had in many sections of our society just reinforces this. Many of us grew up thinking how can we be content, or happy unless we’ve found success and security? But in DT’s economy, the possibility of security is getting ever more difficult to achieve. And in the face of DT, if we get past the grief for our world and depression in ourselves, shouldn’t anger, outrage, and a commitment to change prevail?

 

So many of us, even the critics in my own mind, seem to doubt we deserve joy. We’ve been educated in discontent with ourselves. Yes, anger and outrage have their place; but so does joy.

 

Historian and activist Tmothy Snyder has written with great clarity about the authoritarian’s playbook and how DT is intent on to filling the air with despair, anxiety, helplessness, defeatism– a sense of being crushed and alone without the power to resist.

 

Snyder recommends we need to acknowledge the thoughts and feelings DT ignites, without letting them control us. And we need to recognize we’re not alone. In fact, knowing how many people share our feelings and are trying to do something to resist DT’s destructiveness is already a step out of isolation and toward community, and action. To act shows us we can act.

 

He then said something else that felt so real to me. “You have to be in the moment to get through the moment.”

 

Fear and depression often thrive when we ruminate in our thoughts about life or about fearful things that might happen instead of being present in what is happening. We might think we can put off joy until the election is over, and if we win. But this can prove counterproductive.

 

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how emotions are created. Our body, mind, and perception systems follow a natural process to provide direction on how to respond to a situation. First, we come awake. We get a message to “pay attention now.” This is followed by appraisals of the stimulus, whether it’s good or bad, wonderful or painful, a problem or a threat. Bodily sensations and feelings are created with an almost unconscious impulse to go either toward, away, or ignore the situation.

 

Then our mind gets even more involved, bringing in memories and judgments. Likes and dislikes are created, or a story to tell ourselves to make sense of what we perceive. And then how we respond, what actions we choose to take depends on how we’ve interpreted the situation we face.

 

Joy opens us to go toward a situation, a problem, a person, not withdraw. One teaching about meditation that has been helpful to me is to notice how the act of meditation itself can be joyful. When we acknowledge and value such feelings, we want to do it again. With political actions. there can be great fear there, but also excitement, a sense of freedom, camaraderie, joy. These latter feelings reinforce our commitment to do it again.

 

But if we do it just to capture joy, we chase it away. If we do it just for headlines, we lose it. So often in the rest of our lives, we do things transactionally. We act for what we can get. We focus on possessions, money; we focus on who we defeat, not who we are.

 

To feel joy is to do something for the quality of our lives, not for the quantity of acclamations. When we do something just to do it, or because it’s the right thing to do, we feel joy. We don’t focus entirely on an idea of what should happen, although such ideas and analyses can guide us. Joy arises in being present in a moment. This is why a deep physical exertion can be so joyful, or seeing a child smile at us, or a sunrise. Or hearing a beautiful piece of music or an unexpected bird call or having a deep revelation. Or when someone we don’t know acts to help us. All these can lead us to forget everything except being right where we are, at home in ourselves and the world.

 

*To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.