Tidying in Uncertain Times: Part 2. Break out your joy.
“Joy is a form of resilience”
In the second grade my brother decided to wear costumes to school. Not on Halloween. Like on a Tuesday. Thankfully my parents, in particular my mother, were the kind of parents who supported this. Also thankfully, his teacher that year did too. My parents or his teacher could have easily squashed his joy. Eventually life will do that anyway, they must have thought, he’s little still. Let him have fun.
A week ago while chatting with a neighbor for a moment, socially distanced by the street between us, I caught a glimpse of two grown people at the end of the street dressed like Easter bunnies. JOY immediately. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened under normal circumstances. Or maybe it would have. A few years ago, I saw a woman in her 60s writing poems on the sidewalks around the train station in the suburb where I lived. JOY. Poems and sidewalk chalk mean a lot to me, so I stopped to talk to her. She had recently moved there and was finding it hard to meet people. My heart broke a little and jumped a little at the thought of her doing this as a way to connect herself to something, someone.
What if you let something that brings you joy bring joy to others right now? What if that joy is noticed by…
Someone who lives alone, lost a loved one and this period of isolation turns up the volume on their grief
A child who is overhearing bits of conversations with some words they understand, some words they do not understand. They do understand that the looks on their parents’ faces don’t match “it’s going to be ok.”
A parent who is out on a walk and between WFHWK and the uncertainty of it all, is struggling to organize thoughts
So does this mean go put on parts of a Halloween costume and wander up and down the street? Maybe. You already know what makes you feel joy, and now you have a chance to connect to it. You don’t have to wait for a holiday, a particular reason, a moment when others say it’s ok. It’s ok right now. You need it, and so do others. Science supports this. Joy helps us recover from the stress we are marinating in right now. For more on this and more on joy in general, check out Ingrid Fetell Lee’s amazing work.
P.S. It’s no surprise that my brother who wore the costumes grew up and created a career that channels his creativity. See his most recent work here, #HashtagTheCowboy. He is “Seth in Marketing,” the Chief Marketing Officer at National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. My mother knew the power of a story, and she let her son write his own story from an early age. Now he is involved in sharing a story from an unexpected hero, the security guard at the museum, who is now sparking joy for people across the world with his charming takeover of their Twitter account.