 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.  In late October, Jonathan and I spent four nights in Baxter State Park on the shores of Daicey Pond, fringed with bright red blueberry bushes, reflecting the imposing majesty of Mt. Katahdin on its mirrored surface. I took the video above while climbing up nearby Doubletop Mountain on a brisk, sun-flooded fall day. I was on my own at that point on the trail, surrounded by nature’s magnificence, feeling vigorous at the start of a promising ascent. The clip may not look like much, but it captured a moment of joy for me.
Joy can be elusive, or complicated, but it feels essential as breath when those moments strike. I got curious about joy, delved into research, and decided that this was more than a one-off blog topic. So… …over the next six weeks, biweekly on Tuesdays, I’ll be posting blogs about joy. We’re winding down the year. Darkness is settling in. Today in central Maine we have 9 ½ hours of daylight, heading towards the winter solstice when we’ll have fewer than 9. Joy lightens us even in dark times. What better time than now to immerse in thoughts of joy? Joy and happiness are not the same. What’s the difference? I particularly liked Brene Brown’s (researcher, author, speaker) explanation. She says, “Joy is unexpected, short-lasting, and high intensity. It’s characterized by a connection with others, or with God, nature, or the universe. Joy expands our thinking and attention, and it fills us with a sense of abandon.” Oh yes! That’s what I was feeling out there on the mountainside – connected, as one with my surroundings. I have felt it standing thigh-deep in the surf, ocean currents swirling around my legs, sand shifting under my feet. I’ve felt it under a starry sky, or on a mountaintop, or when the promise of spring caresses my face on a gentle March breeze. Nature is often the source of unexpected joy. My mom would have called it a sense of wonder. Happiness, Brown suggests, is more fleeting, more situationally based, a response to circumstances. Winning the game makes you happy. Getting a tax refund makes you happy. Joy goes deep and includes some kind of connection outside of ourselves, a sense of meaning. Joy can also come through food, music, a creative pursuit, or communion with loved ones. When I get lost in a writing project, I feel lifted free from myself. Good food, beautiful music, or a grandbaby sleeping against my chest can all infuse me with joy. Thanksgiving is coming up, that celebrated and oft-dreaded gathering of families. Community, food, music, and creativity all come into play at Thanksgiving. They have the potential to provide moments of joy, but we must be open to them. If we look for joy and beauty in the face of contention, disappointment, frustration, even grief, we can lighten our load – and someone else’s. A smile is contagious. But it does demand attention and intention. Take a breath. Be gentle with yourself. Pause. Go for a walk and look for that gelatinous shimmer on the surface of a pond that is almost frozen over with ice. Shuffle your feet though a yellow carpet of leaves. Enter a forest on a windy day and watch the last few leaves dance around you like fireflies. Turn on a symphony, or voices in harmony, or your favorite nostalgic tune. Listen to your family's laughter. Be transported by a single taste of that incredible recipe you just made. Smile. Spread the joy.  We gathered last week after recent travels all over the world – Seoul Korea, California, New York, Mongolia, New England, Greece – to congregate on the coast of Nova Scotia. Eleven of us, all members of the class of '78, turn 65 this year. We’ve led full lives, raised families, suffered tragedies and losses, celebrated the usual life milestones, including the fact that we’re all here to share our 65th birthdays, alive and kicking (notwithstanding a few creaks and rusty joints). Unbeknownst to anyone, we also shared covid 19, which came home with several of us to run its course. Covid doesn’t care who we are or where we came from. It courses around the globe, doing its viral thing. We just have to deal with it. Luckily, covid seems to have mostly lost its fangs.
Hurricane Erin is ripping up the east coast of our continent this week, illustrating our shared susceptibility to nature’s tempestuous moods. Weather doesn’t care if your daughter’s getting married this weekend, or if your travel plans are ruined, or if your neighborhood is in its path. We all live here on the planet with the weather; we have to deal with it. Last May I visited Long Point Bird Observatory on the Canada side of Lake Erie. I learned a lot about birds – their travels to and from South and Central America, their difficulties finding sufficient insects to fuel their migrations these days, their dwindling populations and valiant efforts at adapting to the changing ecosystems and resource depletions. Birds cover thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of miles each year in their annual travels. Birds don’t care about international boundaries or politics or ownership. They all live here on the planet with the plants and insects that house and feed them; they have to deal with whatever state the globe has to offer. So do we. We just don’t seem to have the intelligence to recognize it. Who’s the birdbrain here? My pre-school grandchildren (five of them!) are learning how to share. It’s not easy, but it’s an essential skill. I hope we older folks can model what we’d like them to learn: We share this planet. Imagining that we can isolate ourselves within some imaginary boundary lines is the height of idiocy. No wall exists that can shut out the haze from wildfires or the swollen seas of a hurricane or a killing infection or the rising tide of indignation against injustice. We have no other home but this one. The Earth doesn’t care if humans survive. Our extinction might cost the planet some turmoil, but it will shrug us off and move on if we can’t deal with it intelligently. If we want to live here, we’re going to have to learn to open boundaries, not close them, starting with the boundaries in our hearts and minds. The fog was thick over the Cranberry Isles early this morning. There was no distance to see out our bedroom windows, only a blank backdrop of gray. By the time I took Daisy for a walk around the east end of Sutton it was beginning to dissolve. The other Cranberries hovered in the distance, looking like islands in the clouds, fantasy worlds floating in the sky that might disappear before you reached them. By the time we had rounded the tip of the island, rays of sunlight pierced the cloud cover, transforming a patch of sea into sparkling light. An hour later, only wisps of fog remained, curling up over the land in soft tendrils under a blueing sky. The rounded mountaintops of Mt. Desert Island emerged, sentinels of strength. Fog can be beautiful. Its soft blanket can be a comforting embrace, its lifting a celebratory spectacle. Some days the fog never lifts. We move through its damp, gray suspension, isolated from the world. On those days we might tend toward restlessness, disorientation, dissatisfaction. We grow impatient for change. Fog beckons introspection. It suggests detachment, maybe a loss of clarity. No wonder there are times we say our minds are in a fog when we feel lost. Two people I love are working through metaphorical fogs right now (probably more – but two that I know of). One’s fog is interwoven with grief, the other’s is a chronic fog of depression and anxiety. My hope for them, and for you when your fog rolls in, is that your fog’s soft enveloping allows you the time you need for quiet. May it not stay too long. Rest assured, it will dissolve eventually in wispy tendrils that cling for a time. Rays of sun will sneak through the cloud cover, revealing sparkles of light.  My husband doesn’t do things half way. Well, that’s not entirely true. He is known to start projects and leave them half done for extended periods, but that’s because he’s not inclined to do things half-assedly. It’s not a crappy job, it’s just not finished yet! I have no problem doing a half-assed job, as long as there’s a modicum of improvement. But I digress.
This is a picture of Jonathan mowing the lawn this evening, around 8:15pm, under the full moon (99.04% visible, but let’s not quibble). He started this morning after making me an excellent Mother’s Day breakfast. He took a few breaks for errands, a visit to his mom, then got back at it when he got home. Our rider mowers are all incapacitated at the moment, the ones we use to mow trails around the 13 acres of field out back behind our main yard. We don’t mow much until the fall, but I like my trails through the summer so I can avoid tall grass and ticks. The grass had grown very tall and thick after a week of rain. I've been getting discouraged. No ride-on mowers? No problem, Jonathan decided this morning. He was going to mow. Everything. With the little push mower. And he did. Must have been 8 miles’ worth at least. As he finished under the rising moon, I watched a muskrat circle the pond with a chunk of cattail in its mouth. The peepers sang their loud chorus, crescendoing as the light shifted from sunset to moonglow. Some creature whose song I didn’t recognize startled Daisy and me with a loud, sharp, rhythmic chirp. Tree frog? Toad? A catbird sang its evening confusion of melodies from a fencepost. I took two walks around the whole property, marveling at Jonathan’s double trail (he did everything twice to make it wide enough for two), a smile on my face. No ticks! I am a happy mother today. I’m a happy grandmother. But I’m especially a happy wife. This guy is a keeper. I hope he’ll be able to walk tomorrow.  After struggling through March snow in the back fields – snow on ice on snow, frozen ruts and hummocks, hardened tracks that hold you up until you posthole down 18 inches in a soft spot – I was inspired to explore the language of snow. I knew that the Sami people of northern Scandinavia and the North American Inuit have many words for snow and ice, but I didn’t know that the language with the most snow-words of all (420!) is Scots. Here are a couple of good ones:
Feefle: verb. To swirl like snow Flindrikin: noun. A slight snow shower I think we should adopt more snow words into English, not just for variations in snowfall (fat clusters, icy sleet, drifting flakes, driving blizzards) but for the snow on the ground. There is sticky snowman snow, light fluffy snow (the most fun to walk through), heavy sandlike snow (the least fun to shovel off the driveway), snow with hardened crust on top (treacherous for dogs and humans without snowshoes). So many varieties. My favorite is story snow, snow that reveals worlds to us we normally don’t see. This kind of snow tells about the blowing wind, snowclumps fallen from tree branches, and the prolific traffic patterns of non-human creatures. After a story snow you see exactly where the mice travel in and out of the barn, where a cat went into the garage, where the fox walks in my snowshoe tracks for ease of passage. The other day I saw this scene (photo above) in a patch of snow. What happened here? Something dramatic between a winged creature and one with paws. Dogs may “see” these trails year-round with their noses, but we humans are dependent on sight. Certain winter days remind us of the many lives whose world we share. They are busier even than we are, struggling, foraging, fighting, dying. The signs are all there while we stroll past, oblivious, until there’s a dusting of story snow.  I found my gloves in the freezer last week. Yeah, I have no idea.
When you’re in your 60s and you forget your friend’s last name, or you miscount your cribbage score, or you find your gloves in the freezer, you do start to wonder if dementia might be setting in. But then I remind myself that I had similar moments when I was much younger and sleep-deprived, or pregnant, or juggling ten thousand tasks with a deadline of tomorrow. I’m guessing it’s just the holiday craze. I am distracted. Daisy is patient with me but relentless. She’ll appear in the kitchen with a ball in her mouth, which she flings around temptingly (she hopes). When that doesn’t work she’ll try putting the ball in my lap, which I often fail to notice for several minutes, when I shift position and it falls to the floor. She has figured out that if she brings me a scrap of some old, shredded squeak toy (see photo), it stays in my lap longer. Finally I notice the scrap, look up at Daisy’s hopeful eyes, and play tug for a minute or two before I disappear into my head again. But I’m smiling now. I’m so glad she’s there to remind me. When I’m scattered enough to dump my gloves into the freezer with the groceries (I assume that’s what happened; I didn’t find any ice cream in the coat closet), it’s time to stop and play. I don’t think I’m losing my mind, but I’m losing track of what’s right in front of me – dogs, people, beautiful music, a quiet snowfall. During this busy holiday season, here’s wishing you all the gifts that Daisy brings me:
Also – pro tip: if you can’t find your gloves, try the freezer.  There are a few things that never fail to boost my spirits. One of them is October light shining through fall foliage. Another is when someone tells me I’ve done something well.
Why should they matter, those overt acknowledgements of admiration or appreciation? Maybe because none of us really knows how we are received by others. We try our best, most of the time. We hope we’re doing okay, but many of us are plagued with uncertainty. Self-doubt, given time to propagate, can be overpowering. I’ve been a hospice volunteer for two and half years. One of my clients had dementia, so it was hard to know how much affect my visits had. I sang and chatted and read poems. I was a one-woman improv show, and it could be discouraging. I couldn’t help wondering, do my efforts make any difference? After my fourth visit, the client’s spouse said to me, “I don’t know if anyone’s said anything to you, but you’re great at this. [Client] really perks up when you’re here.” I was transformed by the simple comment. To know our endeavors matter…helps a lot. It reminded me that I need to share my admiration for the spouse’s never-ending daily efforts in return. Every time. It will never hurt. And maybe I need to share my appreciation for my own spouse, and my friends, and the cashier at the grocery store, and the gas station attendant who always offers a nice smile and friendly greeting. Maybe we should look for opportunities to spread the wealth of those little boosts every chance we get. What a nice meal you made. This place looks great. Wow, you’ve been working hard. You were so kind today. You are so talented. I can tell you put time into that. Thanks – you've made such a difference. You are not alone. I see you. It’s worth saying out loud. |
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
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