The Quest For Joy

Start here. Because joy is not only possible, but necessary.

The world is burning. Everything is breaking.

And so we look for joy, because joy is a subversive thing. Joy will keep you going. Joy will give you strength and flexibility. It will allow you to keep hope alive, because there’s light among the darkness.

Humans are amazing. We make art with shrapnel and turn our pain into song, into poetry. We play piano while waiting for the bombs. We tell jokes and plant gardens and write stories and gather around the table or the fire to celebrate anything we can. We look for joy alone and together, and often find it in that togetherness, in sharing, in community.

Joy is as universal as breathing.

Why We Are Here

Joy is also deeply personal and unique. You and I can share joy, find joy in the same things, but the complete map of what fills you with happiness, energy and pleasure will be different than mine.

That’s why we’re here. To draw that map, so you can revisit this land anytime you want, anytime you need it. To uncover new, unexplored paths on your map, so you can expand your joy and your connection to joyfulness.

So you can find your joy, if not every day, at least every week.

Joy is possible.

You may feel like you don’t have a right to it. Everything is fucked, people are suffering, how can I think about joy?

Think of it as putting your own mask on first. Joy makes you stronger, healthier, more capable of facing challenges and doing the work necessary to change things.

Maybe your life is hard and filled with adversity or sorrow, and you don’t feel like joy is possible for you. I get it. I really do.

It’s not easy for me to talk about this, but. [ deep breaths ] I know adversity and sorrow. I’ve been poor. Very, very poor. Food-is-not-always-guaranteed poor. I’ve lost people in tragic ways. I’ve been deeply, completely and utterly depressed. I’ve felt hopeless, unwanted, useless. There’s some stuff I can’t even mention. Trauma I’m still untangling, decades later.

Joy helped me go through all that, helped me survive and get here.

It’s not easy, I know. But it’s possible, I promise.

Joy can be complicated.

Toxic positivity has no place here, however. We are allowed to be sad, to be hurt. We acknowledge pain, trauma, depression, anxiety, loss, and all the other deeply difficult things that are part of our lives.

Enjoying things, being happy, experiencing joy, doesn’t negate reality. I’ll never advocate for pretending everything is fine, dismissing your trauma, or numbing yourself with distractions.

If you have gone through difficult or traumatic experiences, I will never tell you to be grateful for whatever happened to you. You can, of course, if you want to, if you feel like it. But many of us don’t, and that’s okay too.

Experiencing joy and other positive emotions doesn’t mean the other things you feel - depression, sadness, anxiety, grief - are not real, or that you’re… I don’t know. Feeling them wrong, I guess, or not feeling them enough.

Being human is a fucking complicated business. We contain multitudes, and we experience multiple feelings and emotions, often at the same time. It’s normal, it’s part of who we are.

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Joy is not only possible, but necessary.

A moment of joy in the midst of a crisis is like taking a breath when you’re drowning; that short moment when you manage to break the surface of the water and get the precious oxygen you need to keep going, to keep fighting, to not give up.

If you live in fight-or-flight mode, if you’re chronically stressed and anxious, joy can help you avoid burnout and collapse.

It’s also has a residual and cumulative effect, and it works on a systemic level. A steady practice of joy will feed your soul (whatever concept of “soul” you may have, be it mental, spiritual, emotional or anything in between). It will sparkle your creativity, strengthen your patience.

Joy can be light in the darkness. It will guide you forward, one step after the other.

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Joy is a living thing.

And joy, like happiness, is not a constant state, and it’s not some goal you’ll achieve and be done with it. It will never be a static thing; it flows, grows and changes with you. You are a living thing, and so is your joy.

It’s something we find again and again, in small moments, in big happenings, in silent contemplation and wild gatherings.

Which is a good thing, because it means if you lost your joy today, if you couldn’t find it this week - there’s tomorrow, another day, next week.

You can find it again.

We can do it, together.

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What Can You Expect

🌳 A weekly quest to find your joy in everyday things.

Every week, I’ll send you a new quest, comprised of three parts:

1. Story - writings & explorations about different sources of joy, along with my own experiences;

2. Quest - ideas on how you can find that type of joy in your own life, things you can experiment and try, and one or more tasks to guide your search.

3. Clues - a few resources related with the week’s quest, such as links, book suggestions and quotes, to help you with your quest for joy.

Not all quests will resonate with you, and that’s fine. You can just skip anything that doesn’t appeal to you, or use it as inspiration for your own quests.

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This Week’s Tasks - The Quest For Joy

1 - Map it out, Write it down

The best way to to go about this quest for joy and make it actually have a positive impact in your life, is to keep track of your discoveries and experiments.

Why? Because - paraphrasing - life keeps co ming and it doesn’t stop coming.

We get run over and dragged under every day by stuff like jobs, work, relationships, study, health issues and the the-world-is-burning thing. It’s very easy to forget about joy, exploration, creativity. It’s very hard to feel like we have time for these things, or like they matter. But they do.

So what we need is to create space and time for it. We need to turn it into a practice, something intentional. For that, I ask that you set up a place or system to track your quests. It doesn’t need to be complicated or cumbersome; just a place where you can take notes and explore your thoughts and feelings.

It can be a list, drawings, notes, a mind map, or even an actual map (wouldn’t that be cool?!). Digital or paper, whatever medium sparks more joy for you is the best one. :)

2 - Think about your joy

For our first exploration, let’s create a basic outline of what the concept of joy looks like today for you. Some questions to get you started:

• What do you think of, when you think about joy?

• How does it feel for you?

• What things, activities or people give you joy?

Don’t get bogged down by this. Just think about it and write down the first answers that come to you. You can refine and change things later; we’re just looking for a basic starting point, and to get this practice started.

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This Week’s Clues

🔧Some tools you can use

• Inkarnate - If you like the idea of creating an actual map of your joy, you can try this website. It has free and paid plans, and no, I’m not getting anything out of recommending it to you. I just think it looks cool. 😁

• For mind maps, you can use Canva (they have a whiteboard tool and mind map templates) or a dedicated tool like Whimsical.

• For notes and lists, I recommend Notion. I love Notion and use it for everything - including writing this newsletter. 😀 Another good option is Obsidian.

• If you want something simple, Google Keep is my go-to for quick notes and lists.

• If paper is your thing, choose a dedicated notebook or sketchbook for your quests for joy. If you have a stash of unused beautiful notebooks like I do, this is the perfect excuse to finally use one of them!

• Afraid of “messing it up”? Buy some erasable pens and go to town. I use the Pilot FriXion line, but there are many options at different price points.

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📚Reads

➡️ This Is How Joy Affects Your Body

—“On a scientific level, we feel joy in our neurotransmitters, which are tiny chemical “messenger” cells that transmit signals between neurons (nerves) and other bodily cells.

Those neurotransmitters are responsible for processes and feelings in almost every aspect of the body, from blood flow to digestion. Here are all the ways happiness runs throughout your body.”

➡️ Your Body on Joy

—“Research shows that joy can make us more resilient and effective in a time of climate change.

Joy can strengthen our resolve, help us unlock creativity, and bolster our resilience. In Fix’s Joy Issue, we explore the importance and power of finding joy in the face of grief, anger, and a changing climate.”

➡️ A Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating Century-Old Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want

A delightful essay about a book written by the British psychoanalyst and writer Marion Milner, chronicling how she “undertook a seven-year experiment in living, aimed at unpeeling the existential rind of all we chronically mistake for fulfillment — prestige, pleasure, popularity — to reveal the succulent, pulsating core of what makes for genuine happiness.”

I don’t necessarily agree with all she has to say, but it’s an inspiring, thought-provoking read. I especially like this:

—“By keeping a diary of what made me happy I had discovered that happiness came when I was most widely aware.”

This quote encapsulates what we’re doing here. Both because I also believe that paying attention, being aware, is important in our quest to find joy, and because these weekly emails aspire to be a sort of “diary keeping”; a place where we can be reminded, again and again, to look for joy, and a space where you can keep track of your findings and build upon them.

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🎙️Listen

➡️ How creating space for joy can build resilience

A How to Be a Better Human podcast episode.

—“With all the terrible things happening in the world lately, does the idea of maintaining a spark of joy in your day to day feel unrealistic? Or even inappropriate?

Today’s guest, Miracle Jones, believes that all the collective tragedy makes the role of joy in our routines even more crucial. She is a community organizer and queer activist who currently serves as the director of policy and advocacy at 1Hood Media.

In today’s episode, Miracle meditates on the importance of joy as a catalyst for resilience, growth, and collective action, and shares how we can cultivate its practice even (and perhaps especially) in the darkest of times.”

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🌳 Quote

Source: The Orange, by Wendy Cope

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That’s It For Today!

Wow, that was a lot, wasn’t it? 😁

Since we’re just getting started, I don’t know yet if future editions will be the same, or longer or shorter; I’m still figuring things out. Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think.

I hope you enjoyed it, and that it will be useful to you. If not, there’s always next week!

See you then. —Nospheratt