// What a Joy //

I returned to classes a couple weeks ago and to be honest it has been a rocky return. I feel like I’m barely even there and maybe 1/8 of my attention is dedicated to what’s going on in the classroom. Anyway, I find usually in the first week of a semester I’ll get hung up on one small thing that definitely should take an hour or less but instead takes me a week and endless reading because I can be a little neurotic. In one of my classes, we were given an assignment to interview the happiest person we know, which is a bit of an extraordinary task if you ask me. But the other small fraction was to find an article or URL link to post in the online classroom about happiness. 

This was the insignificant part I clung to. So I start googling. ‘Happiness articles’ ‘Articles about happiness’ ‘What is happiness?’ ‘Essays about happiness’ ‘Happiness essays’ ‘How to be happy’. Needless to say, my search history currently looks like it belongs to a despondent and desperate person who can’t seem to wrap their head around anything but their own despair. Anyway, everything that was coming up was stupid. I’m not going to sugar coat it – they were ugly little articles about how to begin a happiness journey or what things you can do right now to increase your happiness. Yuck. Gross. 

So the next thing I attempted was typing in a couple authors/essayists I enjoy with ‘happiness’ preceding their names. I tried Joan Didion, but I knew before I even hit search that it would be a dead end. Then I tried David Sedaris which I also knew was a desperate attempt and found an essay called Happy-Go-Lucky but after reading a few sentences remembered I had read it before, and it made me cry – and that the tears definitely weren’t tears of joy (though I do recommend it if you get a chance, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/happy-go-lucky). Then finally I tried Zadie Smith. I had picked up her book Feel Free last summer but only made my way through about half of it. I enjoyed some of her words though. After a quick search, an essay called ‘Joy’ popped up. 

In this essay, she discusses the difference between joy and pleasure and how we can experience these things in such drastically different ways. Interestingly enough she doesn’t ever really describe her joy as something as straightforward as we might imagine. Instead, she describes it as “a mix of terror, pain, and delight” stressing that sometimes joy is not very pleasurable at all. I really enjoyed the essay overall. I felt like the section where she talked about using drugs as one of her moments of joy was a bit out of place compared to the rest of the essay. Is it even considered authentic when we find joy from seeking it out? But I mostly connected with what she was saying. Joy isn’t much of a good time at all because if you’re anything like me you’re imagining that the joy will end at some point and isn’t that so much worse than anything you could ever imagine? Joy ending? 

I feel like we’re quick to imagine or say we know what happiness, or joy, or even pleasure is but when you really break it down, it’s not as clean cut as it appears. Perhaps this is a cynical view but it’s one I connect with. Smith goes on to say that joy is distinctively human. Animals will always and only choose pleasure as they do not possess the capacity to choose otherwise. And isn’t it interesting that even though we don’t have to choose joy, we still do? Even knowing the downfalls that come with it. Even the worst parts of it still mustn’t outweigh the good.

I chose this piece for my assignment because I feel like we often discuss happiness or joy without really questioning what exactly it is. What makes joy joy? Is it something we truly want or need? Or something we choose for other reasons? Much like love, I feel we don’t really know what joy or happiness is – we’re just told we should want it and attempt against all odds to find it. And that’s fine for some people, but for someone who never truly feels at peace and struggles with the idea that I probably have no real purpose here and that even though there’s no real purpose there must be a deeper meaning for everything – it’s not enough. I want answers. Maybe you do too, and if so I highly recommend this essay. 

Something else she mentions is a quote from English writer Julian Barnes that goes like this: “It hurts exactly as much as it’s worth.” I think that might be one of the truest things I’ve ever heard but also I struggle to remind myself of it. When I’m feeling lowly and sorry for myself, all I can seem to focus on is getting over the terrible feelings and wishing I wasn’t feeling them at all. And then I think back to my most awful moments - times when there was no light at the end of the tunnel, and I think about my level of creativity or yearning to actualize and how that feeling becomes all consuming. “Is joining our sorrows joy?” 

I guess all this is to say, feelings are so complicated. I thought by the age of 25 I’d have figured it out - if not in full, then at least partially. Yet here I am. In a constant battle with myself, tossing and turning in bed at night, in a staring contest with the floor in class, feelings bubbling up inside of my chest and cracking open at the most undesirable of moments. I suppose "I’m only human" will have to be my greatest excuse. 

// A Small and Brief Comeback //

I’ve been trying to write in this space again for quite some time. But all I can seem to do these days is come up with half thoughts, or ideas I know could be something, but haven’t figured out what yet. Like just the other day I was thinking about how we’re all really the same, yet our little lives are somehow still compelling. We’re all searching for love and rejecting it. We’re all wondering what our purpose might be if there even is one at all. We’re all staring up at the stars or out at the horizon from time to time – feeling a little lost or alone or at peace. We all think we’re different, but all secretly know we’re the same, but refuse to be honest with ourselves. I think that’s part of why I struggle to write here. I know it’s extremely likely that each of you have had these same thoughts and I want to write something original. But I guess when I really think about it, that’s kind of the whole point of writing – you read to feel less alone in your thoughts, and you write in hopes someone will understand you. If I were writing unrelatable words here, it would sort of definitely absolutely be a pile of trash.

I am not an artist destined for the world’s eyes, but merely an artist of my bedroom, late at night when my mind goes wild with questions and creations and dreams. I scribble words I can rarely re-read, and when I am able, they make little sense except a phrase or two. 

I am an artist to a few dear listeners who are desperate to hear the voices of those around them. Readers consumed by their empathies and need for connection; they are artists too.

I am not for the world for my thoughts are not worldly. They are stuck, cemented in the grooves of the foot trails of my feelings. I cannot forget my words from the past even though the past no longer exists. So I write about it because I cannot write accurately about the future. I am an artist of yesterday and yester-years. Bound tightly by the events I’ve already lived, forced to remember.

My words may not be destined for more than my own sclera, but I am content with that. Because I’m allowed to say I love apples this month and that I despise apples next – and have the pleasure of never feeling the cold hand of critique when I have changed my mind.

I am an artist. But I worry my art is fading. Like a candle that’s been burning too long and deep, drowning in itself, soon to go dark and cold. Instead of reaching excitedly for a pen or keyboard because I’m overwhelmed with ideas and thoughts, I must conjure up the energy to even open the notes app on my phone. My brain is a mailbox full to the brim, thoughts slipping out from the sides. Stressors mostly, fears, worries, disbelief, doubt, and a whole lot of nothing which spreads like the common cold and ironically takes up more space than any other thing in there.

I sit at my desk these days with a frustrated hand touching the place where a needle permanently etched my body with the crest of a writer. Unmistakably symbolic of who I am, now fearful it’s who I was.

I’m working on convincing myself it’s a simple case of writer’s block. But painfully aware of all the writers who die from that same affliction. This world is not curated for those of us who simply want to make something. It’s simple enough until you grow up, and then survival is impossible without severing the veins of creation. Succumb to reality, errands, paperwork, a career - consumer consumed by consumption. 

I am an artist borne with a scar of desire, melodrama, an eye for the poetic, and an overwhelming amount of sadness. I am an artist of words. My creations do not come easily anymore, and when they do, they are often jumbled and flawed. But they are mine.