 For this final post about joy, I’d like to keep things simple. I hope these posts about joy - Joy Defined, Joy on a Leash, and Unselfish Joy - have been as helpful to you as they have been to me. The act of writing is itself instructive, so I encourage you to take a shot at writing your own thoughts about how to encompass joy as we set sail into the new year. In doing so, you will make the world a better place not only for yourself but for those around you. Joy makes things better.
What I have learned, and have begun to work on over the last few weeks, is the imperative of intentional joy. When we actively turn from fear towards gratitude, when we make joy and gratitude a daily practice, it begins to become a habit. We need to pay joy attention. The internet spouts a lot of joyful messaging. I am often warmed and heartened by social media posts, but much of it is hollow, aggressive, loud, frantic, too much. It can elicit the opposite of sympathetic joy - envy, resentment, despair. Break free. Leave your phone, your tablet, your smart watch, your laptop – behind, and go into the world, your world, the one right there. Find joy at your fingertips, at your feet, all around you. The smell of coffee brewing, the soft breathing of a sleeping dog, cozy socks, a warm bath. The best kind of joy arrives quietly, during unsuspecting moments of peaceful contemplation, silent moments. Step away from the internet, from the chaos of your kitchen, your job, your household, the world…and find quiet joy in your mind. The world is riven with heartbreak, cruelty, violence, fear. We are inundated with reports of all the ways in which joy is smothered by despair. I ask myself, “Am I irresponsible? Am I selfish, to be joyful at all in such a world?” I don’t think so. When I feel hopeless, love and gratitude can work as an antidote. Guilt and shame won’t make the world better, but maybe love and joy and gratitude, practiced every day, can help at least a little bit. I don’t know, but it’s worth a try. Wishing you all a 2026 filled with quiet joy. Look for it. It’s there. Spread it around. **Peace
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 "I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” ‒ Anne Frank “I will never apologize for embracing joy and beauty – even when the world is falling apart – because joy and beauty are my fuel for activism.” ‒ Karen Walrond – The Lightmaker’s Manifesto A cancer diagnosis took a friend of mine by surprise not long ago. I called a few weeks later to ask how things were going. Being an honest person, she said, “not so well.” A normally vital, fit person, she’d been knocked back by treatments and complications that led to hospitalizations and surgery, leaving her severely weakened. She filled me in on these brief details then pivoted the conversation. “But what’s up with you? What’s going on in your life?” I shared some news – another grandchild on the way, holiday plans. My friend took in my tidings and her voice animated with genuine pleasure. There’s a word for that thing she did. It’s called unselfish joy, also known as sympathetic joy, or mudita. In the Buddhist faith, mudita – sympathetic or unselfish joy – is one of the four core practices to cultivate for a good life (the others being loving kindness, compassion, and equanimity). It is also considered the most difficult of the four to put into practice. My UU minister put our congregation through an exercise last month. “Close your eyes. Take a few slow, deep breaths to help yourself relax,” he began. “Now think of someone you know, friend or family…” At this point I assumed we’d be sending positive thoughts to someone who needed our help, our prayers. That’s the usual routine. But then he surprised me. “Think of someone you know who is joyful about something – a success, a relief, an unexpected good fortune.” I found it strangely challenging. I wasn’t used to looking for joyful people around me rather than those in need. Once we’d found the person to focus on, the minister asked us to celebrate their joy inside ourselves – without envy (why can’t good things happen to me?), without resentment (what did they do to get that that I didn’t do?). Feel their joy as your own. Find genuine happiness of your own on their behalf. In my work as a hospice volunteer, you’d think I’d see many people mired in self-pity, but my experience has been the contrary. I see mudita often. Many dying patients reach out to the world to receive and celebrate the joy in others, with every last ounce of energy. Their generosity is humbling and poignant. Sympathetic joy seems to be something people are more able to practice when they see life’s end approaching. One shining example of this phenomenon is a young woman named Suleika Jaouad. Suleika is a widely known author and motivational speaker, currently facing her third assault of cancer. I consider her a shining star throwing light around the world, despite or maybe because of the challenges thrown at her. Her regular newsletters always highlight others, and they always circle back in some way to the idea of a quiet, daily practice of gratitude, joy, and creativity. If you need a pick-me-up, check out her free newsletter, or become a paid subscriber as I did, or listen to her speak on the Stephen Colbert show. You’ll feel better, having felt her joyful light even in dark times. When I researched and wrote about how to counter the insidious incursions of foreboding joy, I found that gratitude must become an intentional, daily practice in order to fully absorb joy. Mudita is the same. It takes practice. When you feel envy rising, think of this charming anecdote that quotes the Dalai Lama from yogajournal.com: During a rainy retreat in Dharamsala, India, I heard the Dalai Lama—someone who radiates joy, despite the horrors he has lived through—explain the benefits of cultivating mudita. “It’s only logical,” he said with an infectious giggle, looking out at the maroon-robed monks huddled under umbrellas in the temple courtyard. “If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy when good things happen to other people, billions more chances to be happy!” The news is heavy-laden with unjoyful tidings. Cultivating joy of any kind can be arduous. Unselfish joy is especially hard, but I’m grateful to be reminded of its importance. A billion chances to be happy sounds like a good lifeline to me.  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. |
AuthorRobin Clifford Wood is an award-winning author, poet, and writing teacher. She lives in central Maine with her husband, loves to be outdoors, and enjoys ever-expanding horizons through her children, grandchildren, and granddogs. Archives
December 2025
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