Does joy matter now?

Original Medium Post HERE

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With everything happening in the world, should we pursue joy?

View from a run: Boston’s skyline behind Belle Isle Marsh in a November Wednesday’s early morning light.

Maybe you don’t want to read about joy today, or this week, or ever.

Wars are destroying so many innocent lives in Ukraine, the Middle East, and beyond. Violence and oppression reign in parts of the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Africa. Democracy has been in retreat globally, and in the US, for well over a decade. Authoritarianism is ascendant.

There are more extreme weather events.

AI developers say AI could be an existential threat.

Maybe you or your loved ones are facing great personal struggles too.

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Joy could seem frivolous, a luxury. Talking about joy could seem tone deaf.

However, that is far from the truth.

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We need joy now — particularly now.

People who are happier (joy = happiness x time) get stuff done. They care more about making the world a better place. They are more resilient in the face of challenges.

The teachers, social workers, doctors and nurses I know who stay in the work, and serve people with the most complex challenges, share a few attributes: a good sense of humor, ability to have fun, ability to “turn it off” and take care of themselves.

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Where do we find joy?

Joy lives in community. We call it community joy.

We have built a huge happiness industrial complex to support individual happiness, but our nation’s people have become less happy.

When we feel overwhelmed and helpless, community is not a luxury. We not only find joy in community; we also find strength there.

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Five pillars of community joy

These five evidence-based factors that matter most for joy are relationships, purpose, fitness, mindfulness, and fun.

In difficult times, these pillars of joy matter even more.

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1) We accomplish nothing alone. We can only make the world a better place acting together — in relationships.

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2) We cannot abandon our shared purpose. We cannot be resigned to letting the world do to us. The world’s problems are daunting and overwhelming, but what we do right here, right now, in our communities, can lead to transformative change.

Pursuing the purpose of building more joyful communities, where neighbors help neighbors and begin the work of rebuilding trust, can spark change that ripples far beyond our communities.

Hope starts at home. Change starts in community.

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3) We must take care of ourselves enough to sustain our caring for others. Our problems are too urgent for us to burn ourselves out trying to solve them.

On a very recent Wednesday morning, I woke up earlier than planned, worried, tired, unable to go back to sleep. My thoughts were choppy.

I needed to run (fitness). Running to a nearby marsh, where the sun was beginning its climb near Boston’s distant skyline, as birds circled in the sky, I felt centered and peaceful.

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4) I needed to take time for meditation later in the day too. Meditation and exercise helped me be present for others and for work.

A mindful presence can help us continue the important work.

There is a beautiful fragility in our lives, democracy, civilization, this planet. A beautiful fragility wired into this universe.

Volcanoes and plate tectonics provided water, the atmosphere, and life itself — but they also can kill.

Weather too sustains and can kill. The economy grows through creative destruction.

Humans inspire, love, give, care. And we are capable of great violence, hatred, and destruction.

I believe we have and are more of the good than the bad.

But the universe’s pattern makes me question if we ever could fully eliminate the bad from humanity, and still have humanity.[1]

This fragility, this precarity, makes this moment and this life more precious.

We only know what we can put into this world. We can’t control how it is received and we can’t control the outcome. With mindfulness and prayer, we can work even more tenaciously for a better world, while paradoxically letting go of the outcome.

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5) Finally, we all need time for laughter, dancing, playing, fun. It is not a nice-to-have. Fun reminds us life is beautiful and joyful. It renews us and reminds us why we pursue a better world.

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So now, particularly now, stay joyful East Boston.

If you can’t imagine being joyful, start with mindfulness in this moment. Reach out to your people. Donate to support your purpose. Go for a run. Be silly. You need not seek joy. Embrace the pillars of joy, but hold them lightly, and joy and resilience will come — perhaps when you least expect them.

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Please share, subscribe, and join our movement by emailing me or supporting East Boston Social Centers . Look out each week for our posts about boosting joy the only way we can: in community.

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[1] Volcanoes provide a metaphor for what we can do in the face of the humanity’s dangers: identify risks, monitor trends, build resilient homes and buildings and build a little further from the highest risk places. We can save many lives that way, but we can’t eliminate all risk.