Mid-Year Joy Report

Back in April, I wrote a beautiful and uplifting blog post about joy in the midst of the pandemic. April Me was anxious, but hopeful. She wrote, naively, “Our current problems are not unique, and gratitude is easy to come by when everyone in the world is in the same mess.” April Me was certain that her resolution to make 2020 “the year of joy” could still happen, despite the circumstances.

I barely remember April Me, but I’d bet she couldn’t have conceived of July Me, either. Fast forward four months and the world is a different place. While people in some countries are seeing life go back to normal, others of us are living in a strange dystopia, stuck in an unsteady place between the solidarity of lockdown and the impossible fantasy of a normal life. I read a random comment on a random Instagram post that said, “Since March, sadness has been a constant,” and July Me hasn’t been able to get that out of her head.

Sadness has been a constant. 

Recently, sadness has taken up residence in the hollow beneath my breastbone. I’m always aware of its presence, even when it’s not bubbling up and threatening to overcome me (which happens often enough). It’s resourceful, too, gathering up all the remnants of my other sorrows from the past few years—my mother’s death, my father’s illness, our move away from friends and family—and using them to feed its own reservoir of hopelessness and despair. This is the opposite of how I planned to live my 2020. Sadness is the opposite of joy.

Or is it?

Elie Wiesel once said, "The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

Perhaps too, the opposite of joy is not sadness, but indifference.

In the Headspace app, mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe compares a clear mind to a blue sky, and our thoughts, experiences, and feelings to clouds. “Sometimes,” he says, “we get so obsessed by the clouds that we forget about the blue sky altogether. But it’s still there. Every time we’re in a plane and we fly through the clouds, there it is, without fail—blue sky.”

Sorrow doesn’t drive joy away; it just obscures it. And when we can no longer see it, we become indifferent to it. April Me was wiser than she knew. With all this sadness, joy is a lot harder to see than it was before, harder even than it was four months ago, but it’s always there, without fail.

The first sip of coffee in the morning.

The opening chord of a favorite song.

Fresh flowers on the table.

Sadness and joy don’t cancel each other out. They can, and do, coexist, so living with sadness doesn’t mean living without joy. The sky is still blue, and yes, there is still joy.