Don’t forego joy
These are not happy times for many of us. In the face of unrelenting negative news, it is sometimes tempting to see joy as an unacceptable privilege or form of denial of what’s going around us. In truth, the opposite is the case: joy is critical to your well-being and can be an act of resistance.
Here’s what Bishop Desmond Tutu had to say on the matter:
“Discovering more joy does not save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.”
My very favorite quote on this topic comes from Edward Abbey, most famous for writing the Monkey Wrench Gang. Addressing a group of environmentalists in 1976, he offered this:
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
For the sake of yourself and for the sake of the change you seek to make in the world, do not forego joy.