After the depressing events of the last two weeks, this week I want to talk about Joy. Yes – ye are following me through this iteration of walking Brigid’s Path. I’d say sorry, but I’m really not. Sometimes you get the bad and the ugly before the good comes along.
I love trampolining. And ok, it requires some hefty underwear – an F cup could blacken my own eye if I’m not careful – but that’s beside the point. Once the damn thing was up (again, so sorry about that day, neighbours), it was a lot easier to go and play on it. But easier isn’t the same as easy.
I bet ye can all guess how my mind was working once I got that trampoline up. What a waste of money. Grown woman playing on a trampoline. What will people think. It’s not like it’s doing any good. And on, and on, and on. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But joy isn’t always about the immediate effects. And sometimes the shadow work isn’t about digging through what’s gone wrong – sometimes it’s about being disciplined enough to actually let joy into your life, instead of quietly ignoring it.
I have a firm belief that no matter what put us on this earth, or why we’re here, we don’t have to be bloody miserable all the time. There’s real research behind that too – Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden-and-build” theory in psychology argues that positive emotions aren’t just pleasant, they actually build real psychological resources over time: resilience, creativity, the ability to problem-solve. Joy isn’t just a nice feeling. It’s functional. And one well-known long-running study of a group of nuns found that those who expressed more positive emotion in early adulthood went on to live measurably longer than their less expressive peers.
But somehow, along the way, we all got the notion that joy is childish, or immature, or just not part of daily life as an adult. And there are times I wonder who or what benefits from that. (No, no – not me buying into conspiracy theories about capitalism, particularly late-stage capitalism… of course not. Dopamine produced by spending money is just as good as any other kind.)
It’s a hard nut to crack for most of us. Even those deep into sport aren’t immune – the Mayo football team just won the All-Ireland after 75 years, a story big enough to make the New York Times (albeit behind a paywall, but seriously – loads of free stuff on the net about it), but that was 75 years of loss for the fans first. A curse, they called it. That’s all over now. So no, nothing – or hardly anything – is guaranteed to give us joy. But from reading the literature, I’ve found that building habits that lead to joy can.
This all ended in me actually being disciplined about joy. Sounds antithetical, right? But looking at the research – and trust me, I’ve looked at the research – there’s nothing that says joy is spontaneous. In fact, a lot of what’s suggested – a daily walk, noticing nature, watching comedy – kind of needs to be planned for most of us. So I had to plan this too.
I committed to ten minutes a day. Hail, rain, or shine – and honestly, even getting onto the damn thing in the rain is fun enough. Certainly it was for someone watching me. But I decided: ten minutes, usually in the morning, for joy. And ok, it wasn’t the trampoline every day – sometimes the rain really was too much, so I danced for ten minutes instead. (Yes. We’re back to Shakira again.)
I get it – joy and discipline don’t really mix in our modern world. But there’s joy in mastering a new skill, and mastery takes practice. Not to mention repetition. Going back to something I’ve mentioned before about food – there’s joy in producing my own food too. By which I mean buying it and cooking it, not growing it. Taking the time to put love into what goes into my belly. A homemade fajita isn’t the same as an authentic Mexican dish, and it’s not trying to be. But it means I’m valuing myself enough to actually feed myself properly.
We overlook joy far too often. And it’s so important, it’s step three on Brigid’s Path. It’s not about being constantly happy – it’s about getting regular injections of joy into our lives. And sometimes that means heading out on a cold morning to bounce around like an eejit for a few minutes, before putting on your serious face and heading into the world to adult.