About Joy Holiday Series part 2: Joy on a Leash

​When I walk Daisy around the pond and fields, I rarely let her off leash any more. For a while when she first joined our family she stuck close by our side, off leash all the time. As she gained a sense of security, she started allowing her nose to take over. Now when we let her loose, she bolts – after birds, deer, cats, skunks, into the woods, out of sight. She always returns after a few minutes, but they are awful minutes. What if she gets lost? trapped? into a fight? hit by a car? So we keep her on a leash now, but it doesn’t feel entirely right. When Daisy runs free she immerses in joyful abandon, and I am flooded with vicarious joy, but my fear keeps her on a leash.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Brene Brown says, “the most terrifying, difficult emotion we experience as humans” is joy (a reminder of Brown’s definition of joy is here in the post, "Joy part 1").

What a surprising thought. But then,  how often, when moments of joy strike, are they sabotaged by fear? Very often, it turns out. Brown calls this phenomenon foreboding joy.

An example: Your entire family plans to get together for the holidays for the first time in years. You are ecstatic. In the next moment, you are spinning out catastrophe scenarios. Someone will get sick and have to cancel. Your nagging indigestion will turn out to be cancer. Someone will perish on the road in a fiery car crash. Unconsciously (or consciously), we prepare ourselves for the worst in the misguided belief that we can protect ourselves from hurt if it doesn’t surprise us. Nope. Hurt's going to happen, either way.

What we need to work on, Brown says, is to “soften into joy.” Yes, that softening means opening ourselves to vulnerability, but it also opens us to joy – fully, for longer.

One way we can counter the assaults of foreboding joy – no, the ONLY way to counter the assaults of foreboding joy – is to practice gratitude. There is no joy without gratitude. In their interview, Winfrey and Brown enthusiastically agree that no one achieves a full experience of joy unless it comes hand-in-hand with gratitude. Inhabit the joy with active, intentional expressions of gratefulness, and the joy will stick.

My Dad called himself a Deist. He was a devotedly science-based thinker, but, he said, he had to believe in God because he needed someone to thank. I believe it was because he recognized that gratitude opens the door to joy. It takes practice, this gratitude thing. It cannot be a now and then, it has to be an every day. Look for it not just in grand things, but in a snowflake, a warm hat, a good night’s sleep, or a kind word from a stranger.

Experiment with unleashing your joy instead of tamping it down. Life is filled with risks and vulnerabilities, but if we’re too guarded we miss out on joy. Let yourself go.

Now and then, when I’m walking Daisy, I stop and scan the field for hazards. Her long-legged body begins to quiver with anticipation as she senses my hesitation.

“Do you want to run?” I ask her, and I set her loose.

I suffer a few minutes of worry until she circles back, but I’ve weighed the cost-benefit ratio. I let joy take center stage. My worry is far outweighed by Daisy’s explosive sprint through the tall grasses, her leaps at a tree branch where a crow caws and flies off. Might she get hurt? Sure. But it’s not likely. Life is uncertain. We can’t protect ourselves against everything, and if we try too hard, if our armor is too thick, life is diminished. So I cross my fingers, take a deep breath, and allow Daisy’s exuberant expressions of unfettered joy to send their sparkle into the air.