Every summer for the past two decades (perhaps even longer), I have acutely felt an absence, a void. As soon as May starts getting hotter, as soon as buds leave room to leaves, as soon as everyone starts counting the days to vacation, especially if they work in schools, as I have, I am reminded that I am not whole. When everyone seems to breathe more lightly, to want to allow sun and water to replenish them after a year of strife, I shrivel inside, in a ball of angst, rooted deep down in my plexus, barely daring to look up to the mirific blue sky for fear a commet might strike any minute now. And missing my prodigal daughter: joy.
I learned to chase joy away young. “Crying always follows laughter,” “always expect the worst (of things and people),” were sayings my parents’ love repeated to me until they got seared in the tissue of my being, like tatoos that, even when removed, through years of therapy and a life rebuilt, left scars that hurt when I least expect them. I get what they were doing, scared of the world themselves, they tried to protect us, the young and unexperienced. I really do get it. And I spent the past four decades trying to undo it. To crack the armor of fear enough to let the slightest light of joy come in. The price seems to be starting every summer in disarray, in feeling disparate from others, in anguish and disbelief, in looking at my beautiful life from a distance I loathe.
“Joy is vulnerable,” says Dr. Brene Brown, “that’s why we’re afraid to let ourselves feel it.” A double trap of sorts: we are afraid to truly feel our own joy and at the same time, we are bombarded with (many times fabricated) joy on all platforms that nag at us through notifications: look at me, others seem to say, look at how much I am enjoying my life! Look at how much fun I am having! Look at the amazing scenery around me! Comparison is always the thief of joy, that is another thing I learned. Or maybe just heard because it doesn’t seem to be a learning yet. When we compare our insides to other people’s outsides we build a monster that threatens to bury us in an ocean of alienation.
In a conversation I initiated with artificial intelligence around this topic, it asked me an interesting question: If you had it on the highest authority you believe in that there is nothing that you need to pay in exchange for joy, how would you live your life? Still in disbelief, still more wishful than anything else, I typed what came instantly: I would let joy be, I would breathe and I would remain present. How easy it sounds, how hard to do!
From the fifth decade of my life, looking back, I want to say to all parents who are raising young children that there are few things more important that they can teach them, other than cultivating joy, than allowing themselves to feel joy and understanding that it never comes with a price. That they are worthy of feeling joy absolutely unconditionally, that joy can occur alongside sadness, grief, frustration, that joy is fuel and sustenance.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
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