On Joy

A bunch of us grad students were gathered around our Thanksgiving table, discussing a recent work meeting where the ice-breaker had been "Tell us something that brings you joy."

It was a surprisingly difficult question--and I only half-facetiously said "I can't remember!" at the time.  Most folks answered things like playing with their kids, or reading for pleasure (remember that?), or playing sports, or listening to music or what have you.  But none of these responses felt...genuine, however.  Or at least not equal to the question, which I'm not even sure the asker fully understood.

As we discussed the question over our Thanksgiving turkey, we grad students localized what it was that threw us off about that question: it was the fact that what everyone had enumerated was not joy, but pleasure. 

Now, before I continue, I must emphasize that pleasure is by no means a bad thing, in and of itself; I reject the old Puritan notion that all pleasure is suspect.  Nevertheless, pleasure is still not joy; also, pleasure has a come down afterwords, whether that's a hangover, or the endorphin crash after sports, or the fleeting sense of loss once the last of the chocolate is eaten or the beauty product wears off.  Pleasure by its very nature is fleeting, and even in the best of circumstances has a quiet undercurrent of melancholy to it.

Again, that by no means signifies that pleasure should be renounced, or rejected, or not pursued.  Heaven forbid!  Some days, our favorite little pleasures are all that keep us sane. But that is not joy.

Moreover, pleasure, unlike joy, can be planned, budgeted, arranged, counted upon--I shall play basketball tonight, or go out for a drink on Friday, or whatever.  Pleasure is thus part of the status quo, the regularly scheduled, the normal, the ordinary.  Again, this is not a knock on either pleasure or the ordinary; in this tumultuous world of ours, what we often need most is that stability, that reassurance, that reliable organization, that comforting routine.

But even the best of routines is still a routine.  And sometimes what we need most is that which upsets our routines, yes, even the best ones!

And that's where joy comes in!  For Joy cannot be planned for.

Joy, in many ways, is analogous to tragedy, in that no one plans on tragedy, no one expects or schedules for illness or earthquakes or hurricanes or car crashes or sudden death.  Not a single Shakespearean tragedy opens with a character expecting a pile of dead bodies on the stage by the end of Act V.  No one woke up on September 11th expecting to see the two towers come tumbling to the ground. In Baudrillardian terms, pleasure is a non-event, while tragedy is an absolute event.  Tragedy is the utterly unexpected that upsets and changes everything.

The reason so many people come to retroactively see tragedies as blessings is because the tragedy changed things--sometimes permanently!  "It was a wake-up call," goes the cliche after a tragedy, because pleasure and routine had lulled us to sleep; tragedy shook us awake.

But here's the blessed thing--so does joy!  Joy, even more so than cursed tragedy, can be just the wake-up call we need, if we are willing to let it.  Joy cannot be planned, budgeted, arranged, scheduled, or anticipated--it can only be embraced and experienced when it comes.  And that 's why the ice-breaker "name something that brings you joy" annoyed us so--because joy, by it's very nature, cannot be named!  It is not something that we can turn to reliably, because then it would be routine, not a routine-breaker, a disrupter, a game-changer.

Joy is an absolute event, one where nothing can be the same afterwords.  Pleasure is meant to be forgotten, while joy is something that is always remembered!   Joy, then, is revolutionary, radical, subversive.  No wonder we spend so much time avoiding joy at all costs--it is bigger than us.

So then, in the interest of giving thanks on this most recent Thanksgiving (and looking forward to this Christmas season where we all sing "Joy to the World!"), I want to share what I wish I'd responded with instead to that icebreaking question, with the moments that always bring me joy, even (maybe especially) in their remembrance:

-The day I threw Catch-22 into the air at 17, because Yossarian got away.
-The first moment I saw the Guajataca on Hwy 6 along the north shore of Puerto Rico.
-Every single baptism in Puerto Rico, when I feared each time that this time I wouldn't feel it, that I would finally recognize that I'd faked it every time, that it wouldn't be real--but then I always felt it, everytime, all over me...
-When the cloud lifted from Huang Shan in central China after 2 days of white-out fog, and I saw the stunning vista of bamboo rain forest stretch out before me.
-When I walked along the beach of Sayulita, Mexico under the full moon, looking for a place to sleep.
-When I learned I could have quit my awful job for that dishonest sales company after all, when I learned my Grandpa had provided for me, and as I drove back to my apartment I beheld the sun set behind the Rockies and reflect off the amber fields of grain, and I felt move within me the assurance that God knew who I was...
-That all-too-rare house party I attended wherein everyone actually danced, actually fed off each others energy, actually enjoyed ourselves, and I dreamed good dreams that night for the first time in too long...

And many, many others I am sure I'm missing right now.  You can do things conducive to Joy (just as you can for tragedy, too), but you can't plan for it, only let it happen.