Hey, I Love You: Your Joy Is Necessary

[This letter was originally sent on July 31st, 2020. I’m reposting all of my previous HILY letters to preserve them in the archive, and to reach you again (or for the first time) if you need it. New HILY letters coming soon!]

Hi perfectly imperfect human,

I hope you are as well as can be in this continuing difficulty. I am finally getting to a place where I want to sit down to write more regularly, and it feels like coming home to an old friend. My wish for you today is that you can re-engage with something you once loved and remember a bit of yourself through it.

This morning I was listening to an Instagram Live video by writer and activist Sonya Renee Taylor and something she described felt really true to me. She was speaking about her tendency to allow all of the rage and sadness of her experiences to hit her deeply and fully, but that she has a much harder time embodying happier experiences. She described "waiting for the other shoe to drop" and a sense that she was actually pushing away joy for fear of it going away.

I heard myself in that. It can feel scary to allow happiness in if you know it will be temporary. But, ultimately, everything is temporary, right?

There's another layer to this as well. On some level, I think it's my responsibility to feel the grief and sorrow of the world in order to know how to work toward correcting it... but wouldn't it then follow that it's also my responsibility to experience the good? The world is offering us both, all the time. 
 
Here's today's note, with deep gratitude to Sonya Renee Taylor for the inspiration:
 

Your joy is necessary.
<3 

Yes, I said necessary. Not optional, not an afterthought, not even a luxury.

What if you were able to suspend, just for a moment, the idea that suffering is more noble than joy? That in order to be affected by and effective against injustice you must spend as much time as possible knee-deep in its sorrow?

What if the scraps of happiness you allow yourself before tightening the spigot to return to the "real work" are also the work?

Many of us are working so hard to bend the arc of history toward justice that we can lose sight of what the world we are fighting for might look like. To me, a just world is one in which people feel the safety and freedom to be joyful. If we want to bring that reality about, doesn't it follow that we need to be familiar with what it feels like?

If your eyes are opening for the first time (or maybe once again after a time of forgetting) to some of the suffering in the world, it can be overwhelming. Moments of joy may be more fleeting, and moreover, you may even feel *guilty* for feeling joyful when there is so much hard work to be done.

I want to tell you that I understand that, that I have experienced that, and that I don't think it's the truth. Sorrow is not the only teacher. Joy is a powerful teacher too.

I know that in order to be involved for the long haul, we have to be sustained. We have to be resourced. And that feeling of having something to give only comes when we are in touch with experiences of joy.

Try This

You know that feeling of joy bubbling up, unbidden? The moment when you feel fully present and grateful for *right now*? Many of us have a tendency to get in our heads immediately upon experiencing this feeling: Worrying that it will go away, feeling guilt for being happy, or that we are somehow doing it wrong (whatever "it" is). 

Next time you feel a sense of joy, I encourage you to remain in your body as much as you can, rather than in your head. Breathe deeply into it, feel where you are in contact with the ground, allow the sensations of the moment to take center stage. What do you see, smell, feel on your skin? Allow the world, as Kafka once wrote, to "roll in ecstasy at your feet." It may be hard to hold on to for more than a few seconds, but with practice, these moments of fleeting joy may visit more often.

Good Feels

• A Portland church was tagged with "Black Lives Matter" graffiti and instead of painting over it, they turned it into a memorial mural.
• An all-girl high school robotics team in Afghanistan has created a mobile ventilator to help with COVID-19 recovery efforts.
• Iconic red phone boxes in Yorkshire, England have been transformed into libraries, museums, and art pieces.

On the playlist

I first heard "You are the feast" by Sloan Wainwright when I was taking classes with her at The Swannanoa Gathering in 2002. Her vocal performance felt like it was coming up directly out of the Earth to the audience. This song remains one I turn to when I need to remember the sensory delights of the world.

I don't want to be your wife, I don't have to be your lover
I want to be the one to give you back your life
serve it up on a sterling silver platter with all the trimmings...


Listen to the HILY Spotify playlist here.

That's all for now! Remember to drink water, stretch your bod, and hey - I love you.
 

Here’s the part where I tell you that this newsletter helps support all the work I do. If you’re new here, consider subscribing for free. If you’ve been following me for a bit and like what I do, consider a paid subscription. Either way, I’m so glad you’re here.