Discovering Joy

For most of my life, I had believed that happiness and joy were interchangeable feelings, synonyms for the emotion we feel when things are going well, when we are content and untroubled. They represented a feeling that was often fleeting, like when you’re swimming in the ocean and there are those brief moments when you can lie back and float as you wait for the next wave to roll in, unsure of whether it will be the kind of wave that once again pummels you toward the sand or the kind that pulls you out further into the open water, forcing you to fight against the current so as not to get lost, not to drown. I’m not sure I really thought joy could be something that was deep or lasting, something that could buoy me even in times of struggle or sadness. But as I have reflected back on my “year of joy and grief,” on that year of the highest highs and lowest lows, of personal fulfillment amidst devastating loss, I have learned that joy is not the same as happiness or contentment, and that real joy can sometimes be the only thing that keeps you from sinking as the waves of grief hit and threaten to pull you under.

But what is joy, then, if not happiness? I once heard Brené Brown describe the difference between happiness and joy as the difference between circumstance, a state that is temporary and constantly changing, and gratitude, a practice in which we acknowledge and appreciate the good things in our lives. Since practicing gratitude helps us to acknowledge the goodness inside of ourselves and as well as the good around us, it in turn helps us to connect to something larger than ourselves. So while our happiness is dependent upon the circumstances we find ourselves in, our joy is rooted in something deeper – our acknowledgment of and appreciation for the goodness we find in our connection to something bigger: to other people, to nature, to a higher power. But true connection with others requires us to embrace honesty and a real vulnerability, a genuine removal of the armor we have so meticulously crafted in order to protect ourselves, and I think that’s why it has always been difficult for me. Allowing others to see me completely and authentically has often felt deeply uncomfortable. Still, as I think about the joy I experienced in that year in Prague, I’m beginning to think that, perhaps, in breaking down that armor, addressing the fear that belies it and opening myself up to a closeness that speaks to a belief in our innate human connection, I allowed myself to fully swim in the current of joy that waits for all of us if we would just dare to dive in.

For so long, I had stood on the shore, unable to wade into that water because I couldn’t allow myself to see the ways in which we are all so alike, so connected.  Instead, I had convinced myself that I was so very different from others; that my fears and insecurities were somehow unique to me, that others couldn’t possibly fathom the feelings I held hidden in my heart. I had spent much of my life feeling like an outsider looking in on things, never feeling a real sense of belonging. Even in my family, where I felt unconditionally loved and absolutely treasured – I was the baby! – I also felt a little separate in some way. As I child, I imagined that I had been born too late, missing the time when all of my older siblings had played together and created a bond. Of course, that wasn’t truly the case, but in my mind it kept me removed from what I felt was the core of our family, always pushing me to be something a little different to fit into the dynamic a little better. Similarly, as I’ve gotten older, I have always had solid groups of friends, people I could talk with, laugh with, and socialize with. But I think, even with them, I have found ways to guard my deepest self, using laughter to deflect and distract. I often opt for self-deprecating humor as a way of beating others to the punch: you can’t make fun of my flaws, ridicule my weaknesses, if I do it to myself first. I think there are times I even use my kindness as a shield from being too deeply known. I can help others, offer myself up in selflessness as a way of disguising what I view as my profound neediness, distancing myself from my own need to reach out to others for help. 

But why? Why the intense need to create distance? For a long time, I truly feared that if anyone got too close to who I really was, they’d discover all of the ugly emotion I kept buried just below the surface. I was embarrassed at how deeply I felt things, worried that my displays of emotion would make other people feel uncomfortable. I worried I was a person who cried too often when any strong feeling rose up within me. Happiness, anger, frustration, fear, sadness – it all made me cry and I hated it; hated that others saw my tears and mistook them for weakness or dramatics. I worried that my anger would be seen as unfeminine and unattractive, and I tried my best to bury that emotion as far down as I could, deeply ashamed whenever it bubbled to the surface. I worried that, whatever the situation, my face would always betray my emotions, turning a deep shade of red when attention was on me, regardless of whether it was positive or negative. I spent a long time believing that others would see my emotionality as a liability, a sign that I was damaged or weak, deeply incapable and unworthy. 

I think that was the paradox of my loneliness in my younger years: my greatest fear was not that I would be misunderstood, but that I would be deeply, fully known; and, in that knowing, others would reject the raw, messy person I knew myself to be. But I think what happens when we craft this armor, building up defenses so that others cannot see our weaknesses, is that we also prevent ourselves from seeing the ways we are truly connected to those around us. These defenses keep us separated, serving as obstacles to any true intimacy or connection. In her book, Daring Greatly, Brené Brown writes:

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

When we are able to accept all the parts of ourselves – the strengths and weaknesses, the flaws and beauty – we can begin to see the interconnectedness we all share. And in that acceptance, in that showing up authentically, we give others the permission to show up as their own authentic, flawed selves, too. In this way, those very parts of ourselves we had fought to keep hidden can become the portals to the true intimacy with others that we seek. They are the vulnerable spots of ourselves that provide us with the place to connect. In that space between who we are and who we want others to see us as, we have the opportunity to truly meet others as they are, each of us without pretense or disguise. 

Moving abroad for the first time, waking up in that new, foreign city far away from all that felt safe and familiar, I began to experience a connectedness with others that I had shied away from before. I first glimpsed it through the safe distance of email with friends and acquaintances back home, and I think it was my first step towards cultivating a joy that would help to carry me through the worst of that year. 

Each morning during my first month living in Prague, I’d wake up in my tiny room inside the Hotel Dum (on a side note: dum is the Czech word for “home” but is pronounced like the English word “doom,” which to all of us non-Czech speakers living there sounded so much more foreboding than “Hotel Home”). The dormitory-style hotel was located in a large Communist-era, cinder block building that sat on the southern outskirts of Prague. Catching a local bus outside of the hotel each morning, I would ride to the Kacerov station of the metro’s red line, then take the underground train into the city center where the teacher training program I’d signed up for was located. I would ride the escalator up from the metro station below Charles Square, emerging to the already bustling streets filled with vendors setting up their stands of sizzling sausage or fried cheese, groups of tourists clutching their maps, and commuters like myself rushing to their jobs or schools. Before heading to the pair of classrooms nestled above the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Kaprova Street where I would spend 8 hours each day learning techniques to teach English and how to craft lesson plans, I’d first walk to the other side of the Old Town Square, past the statue of Jan Hus and the towering spires of the Tyn Church, and follow the cobblestoned side street to the bright yellow building that housed The Bohemia Bagel.

The Bohemia Bagel was a coffee shop/internet cafe owned by an American who had been the first to sell bagels in the Czech Republic. In the warm glow of the screens from old desk top computers lining the far wall, I’d sit down at one of the keyboards and log into my email. In the days before the advent of social media – before Facebook became our de facto source of “connection” with the world, before there was Twitter or Instagram or even MySpace – the way I stayed connected with friends and family back in the US was my Hotmail account. At my going away party the month before, a friend had laid out a notebook for people to write down their email addresses in, and from those I had created a group list to send emails about my adventures in Europe. And so, about once a week, I’d send out a long, mass email detailing my latest news and describing my experiences: arriving in Prague for the first time, my training program and the cast of characters that populated that experience, what kind of food I was trying and where I was traveling. I’d also include candid insights into what I was feeling as I encountered each of these new experiences: the fear and trepidation, the excitement and the thrill, the humor and sometimes embarrassing ridiculousness of it all. 

In writing those emails, I didn’t feel self-conscious about honestly expressing the emotions I felt. Instead, it felt like one more part of a somewhat fantastical year living in a foreign city amongst Romanesque castles, Baroque churches, and Gothic spires, all of it lending an air of fairy tale surrealness that felt removed from the reality of life back home. While I had hoped, even expected, to receive email messages of encouragement and support in response, what I hadn’t expected was the effusive outpouring of love, affection, and honesty I received in those replies. It was as if people suddenly felt free to tell me things they didn’t dare say to someone they saw everyday. I received messages filled with details of their struggles at home, their fears of trying something new, and hopes for the future. They were also willing to tell me of their feelings for me, of their gratitude for my friendship, and what they admired about me – things we don’t normally express in our daily communications with friends and acquaintances. In a journal entry from my first month in Prague, I had written:

“I feel so overwhelmed by the amount of love and support I’ve received since I left home – such encouraging, heart-boosting emails. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so aware of how deeply people care about me.”

As I consider it all now, I am trying to piece together what it was about that experience that let me feel this deeper sense of connection in those relationships from afar. In general, I think people seem to find it easier to reveal themselves honestly when there isn’t the risk of immediate rejection or ridicule. Maybe that’s why it is so often easier to write our feelings to someone than to say those things to their face. Being separated by distance and circumstance can provide us the safety net we think we need to open ourselves up more authentically. More personally, I think I was already allowing myself to swim in this water of emotional discomfort that comes from new experiences. I had already chosen to embrace a certain level of vulnerability that I hadn’t really allowed in myself before simply by choosing to live in this new place, so far from my normal sources of support and comfort. Perhaps, in showing that vulnerability through my weekly updates, I gave permission to the people who read my emails to be vulnerable and honest, too. I’m beginning to think that those mutual choices to let down our guard a bit, to demonstrate an honesty about ourselves that was both freeing and frightening, allowed us to forge a connection that felt deeper and more meaningful. 

Similarly, living in a foreign country alone, I was beginning to lean on people I had never known before for support, people who had no idea of who I was before, what roles I had played in the lives of those I loved back home. I suspect I felt more free to explore who I really wanted to be in these new relationships, how I wanted to show up for others. And I think it was there, in that first year on my own in Prague, that I started to realize that being singularly, authentically myself – flaws and all – was far more satisfying and less exhausting than managing all of those individual versions of myself I had spent so much time curating before. 

I think some mix of all of these – my need for validation, for moral support, for reminders that I was not completely alone (though, in those occasional moments of deep homesickness I experienced, it certainly felt that way), along with others’ willingness to be open about their feelings and to be honest about their own hopes, wants, and fears – made it possible for me to experience a sense of connection that I hadn’t fully acknowledged before and to appreciate it in a real and meaningful way. 

And that sense of connection – to our true selves, to one another, to something greater – really does seem to be a prerequisite for real joy, a joy that surpasses happiness, rooted not in our circumstances, but in an acknowledgement of and appreciation for that relationship to one another. I think, too, that it was that sense of connection, of knowing that I wasn’t alone, that I could be honest about my hopes and fears and still be loved and accepted, that I was held close in the hearts of others even as I lived on the other side of the world, which helped me to navigate the darkness that would come later that year. When Cathy died, when I left Prague to return home to a world that felt as if it was crashing in around me, I carried joy inside me right alongside my grief. Unlike the feeling of happiness, a capricious emotion so fleeting and so totally obliterated in that moment inside the Prague post office when I heard my brother’s voice on the other end of the telephone line softly utter, “she’s gone,” my joy was not replaced by my sorrow. My joy, rooted in my deep sense of connection and gratitude, remained right there, next to my grief. It was not the easy feeling of contentment of floating on my back while the ocean was calm. Instead, my joy was the safety of the buoy amidst the waves, the anchor that I could cling to that would keep me moored even as the waves of grief crashed around me.