056 Are We Allowed To Feel Joy?
A question for our times
1. 2016
A day or two after Trump had won the 2016 presidential election, I started to experience a bizarre pain radiating out from a spot on the right side of my skull, about 6" back from my hairline. It was so weird and so persistent that I went to see a doctor. She was young and pretty and had at least half a dozen framed photos of her wedding placed on her desk and along the window sill for the easy viewing pleasure of her patients.
She established that I was single and then asked, "Have you been doing anything crazy?"
"Like what?" I said.
"I don't know," she said, shimmying her shoulders, "something crazy?" She giggled like a southern belle off a TV show.
"Well, I went to the beach with my dog," I said. "I don't usually do that."
She scoffed. "That's not crazy." She seemed disappointed and sent me home with a prescription for painkillers.
That night I awoke feeling like a truck had hit me and tried to drink some water, only to have half of it dribble down my front. "Wow," I laughed to myself, "you're losing it. Go back to sleep."
Hours later I awoke to my friend calling me. I'd complained to her about my weird headache and, as someone who had been dealing with acute illness most of her life, she knew to call and see if I was okay. "I'm so glad you called," I drawled. "I'm not even out of bed!" I stumbled over to the window to open the curtains and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I gasped.
"What?" she said, alarmed.
I tried to talk but it felt like I was underwater, and for a moment all I did was swallow air. "My face is lopsided..." I eventually managed. "It looks like I've had a stroke."
"I'm coming right over," she said. Less than 10 minutes later she was buzzing at my door. I had called my doctor and said, "My face seems paralyzed, what should I do?" She said nothing. "Should I go to emergency?"
"Yes," she finally answered. She sounded a mixture of bored and defeated. "Go to emergency."
When I told my friend as she stepped inside my very messy apartment she said, "We're not going to emergency. I'll take you somewhere better." She walked my dog while I got dressed and then walked me five blocks to a small emergency center.
"No, you don't have a stroke," the doctor laughed. "You have Bell's palsy."
A couple of days later I had a specialist appointment with a neurologist. He had an extraordinarily intricate stone carving of a Hindu scene that reached towards the ceiling behind him, and I told him before I’d even sat down how beautiful it was. He took me to an examination room and I lay down on a table while he pressed my face and head. We then returned to his office.
"So many women have Bell's palsy this week," he said, sounding amused. "You need to learn to relax. Try meditating."
I burst out laughing. "You probably shouldn't say 'you need to learn to relax' to women right now," I said, thinking my point was obvious. But he just looked up at me confused.
Like more things than we like to admit, there was absolutely nothing to do about the Bell’s palsy. I just had to ride it out.
2. 2024
Back in 2016 and 2017, I spent about eight months walking the Brooklyn streets as a pirate captain. Then in 2018 on Thanksgiving weekend I was diagnosed with shingles, another virus that attacks only one side of the body.
I could go on about how my health continued to unravel and sag like an over stretched slinky, because I believed if I just worked a bit harder that would make the difference.
Spoiler: It mostly made things worse.
So this time round I am politely yet firmly declining to put my nervous system on a daily roller coaster.
This means I am not going to consume every piece of news. I'm not going to participate in every political conversation I'm invited into—especially the ones that are outraged by the latest outrageous thing someone-who-shall-not-be-named has said at a press conference. I'm not even going to engage with social media. (Well, I've deleted the apps off my phone anyway.)
This is controversial. Am I uninformed? Willfully ignorant? Turning a cold shoulder to civic life and people's suffering?
I don't think so.
What I am doing is refusing to give my life over to an orchestrated media circus designed to distress, distract, and immobilize me.
Instead, I am grounding my life in peace. I am building up my reserves and my strength. I am joyfully relishing the miracle of my own life while I’m still alive.
I am consciously deciding where I am going to make a difference and freely channeling my efforts there, without surrendering my joy to despair.1
I am trusting that other people are doing the same, and collectively we will make all the difference.
3. February Workshop—What is your garden?
For those interested in exploring these ideas further, I'm offering an online Restorative Art Workshop this month to paid subscribers. (And if you're not a paid subscriber but REALLY want to come, just reply to this email.)
Inspired by Voltaire's Candide, we'll use the metaphor of a garden to explore how we can make meaningful contributions while honoring our limits. Through guided creative exercises, we'll each create small artworks representing our own "gardens" - those spaces where we choose to channel our energy and make a difference.
This workshop is about finding self-honoring ways to stay engaged. It's about discovering how joy can be an act of resistance, and how setting boundaries can actually increase our impact.
Wednesday February 26, 5-6:30pm. On Zoom.
Together, we'll practice the art of making change in difficult times while making room to celebrate the beauty and connection that is already woven through our lives.
4. Today was fun!
An incredible human, Bree Groff, has just opened pre-orders for her book about finding joy at work and refusing to let professionalism drain our humanity.
If you pre-order, you'll not only get this wise, joyful, and practical guide delivered to you this summer, you'll also be giving the author an invaluable gift. (Pre-orders are mysteriously crucial in publishing - I don't understand why, but authors say they're a game-changer!)
What this means in practice this week is simply listening deeply to friends - one whose brothers have already been stopped and asked for their 'papers' in Newark; another fielding desperate calls from a village in Africa where friends need money to survive now that ARV funding has been halted; another whose livelihood supporting NGOs is under threat, and more.