DESPITE DIFFICULT 2020, I FOUND JOY,
My friend has just finished her morning meditation reading and she’s eager to share. Devoted church volunteer and a daily Mass attendee, she is far more religious than I am but, in all the decades that we’ve known one another, this has never deterred her. Her voice over the phone echoes with excitement and awe.
On this particular day she talks to me about the Holy Spirit, enumerating its gifts: “Love, joy, patience —”
I stop her. She need go no farther. I’ve had enough.
I am stuck at joy: what it means, where you find it, and why we need it, possibly this year more than others.
Two words I wouldn’t expect to see in the same sentence are “2020” and “joyful.” Depending on luck, depending on geography and profession, the year has been one of contrasting outcomes. Some have lost jobs, others have grown richer. Some have bought homes, others have moved back in with parents. Some have hacked a new path through the wilderness, others have simply gotten lost.
The pandemic has gathered us in a strange embrace of angst and anger, fear and fury, worry and wariness. We’ve lost so much: people we loved, jobs we needed, a way of life we took for granted and, perhaps most important of all, our very American sense of optimistic invincibility. Even with the uplifting photos of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the shadow of collective grief follows us into the New Year.
So, no, joy is not a feeling I would associate with the year.
And yet … and yet. At the most unexpected times, I have found myself laughing aloud at a joke. Chuckling at a clever quip. Delighting in a child’s story.
Is it possible, in the midst of darkness and uncertainty, to entertain joy? Dare I consider it? Can a heart hold both sorrow and jubilation?
For me 2020 will never fail to elicit a wince and a shiver. I will remember it as the year of the coronavirus, of course, but beyond this obvious history, it will forever bear the mark of a terrible personal rending. It will always be the year that I mourned a father and a daughter. (Mourn still, with that occasional punch-in-the-gut disbelief that typifies even the most expected trauma.)
Still, I have managed to yank myself from the clutches of unbearable darkness — sometimes without even realizing it.
Maybe life demands this. Maybe it’s what defines our humanity. To continue despite the depths of our despair.
Many believe joy is a choice, a conscious selection among a variety of options. Just as we pick what clothes to wear, what movie to stream, what food to eat, what neighbor to befriend, we decide between joy and distress. Between light and gloom. Apparently, many of us are already doing it, and may not know it. A poll of
2,000 Americans revealed that 7 in 10 respondents had made it a priority to do something positive every day in a year that had brought so much hardship.
As we close shop on 2020 — as we desperately, deliriously turn the locks, bolt the windows, and secure the gates — it occurs to me that the gift of joy comes in a small package. It’s not a grand gesture or a spectacular event but something more nuanced.
It’s the 22-month-old grandson running into my arms, shrieking “Bela! Bela! Bela!”
It’s the delicate whorl of a budding rose petal.
It’s singing along to “Jingle Bell Rock.” Writing a perfect sentence. Savoring the first sip of a neighbor’s coquito. Sitting in a skiff at arm’s length from the mangrove shoreline.
Joy, I’ve learned these past months, is an act of defiance. A rebellion.