Joy Must Be Chosen
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“Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!”
-Psalm 95:1-2
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a naturally joyful person. Always erring on the side of melancholy, despair, and a dramatically pessimistic outlook on life, my younger self found an odd comfort in sadness — I reveled in operatic arias in which someone lay on their deathbed, or mourned the tragic loss of their true love; I identified with characters who used sarcasm to mask their hurt and anxiety; I felt at home performing heartbreaking and emotional scenes during acting classes rather than cheerful or comedic ones. On the phone recently with my dear, nearly lifelong friend, we both cackled as she recounted just how deeply my younger self basked in everything somber.
With years of growing up, going to counseling, and coming to know my Creator, I see now that much of my penchant for sorrow was rooted in my need to make sense of a world that constantly disappointed me — and being that I am a seeker of comfort, sometimes to my detriment, I chose to make sadness and anxiety my home, a home only big enough for myself.
“I chose to make sadness and anxiety my home, a home only big enough for myself.”
But what started as a home for my soul, a safe place from which I could watch the world go by, became a hindrance; my posture was one of a defeatist’s, convinced that life had nothing but misery in store, and holding onto any semblance of hope or joy was foolish.
This led me to assure myself I didn’t even want friends — I’d had difficulty finding many to begin with, and telling myself I was better off alone felt safer. I persuaded myself to only ever sing in the shower, because my voice might crack in front of a dark, ominous audience. I rolled my eyes at bubbly, popular girls, willing to bet their lives were so much simpler and more painless than my own. I concluded that popular, affable, joyful people were the worst type of people.
The aversion to cheeriness and joyful people I once carried, I see now, stemmed from jealousy — I assumed their sunny disposition could only ever emerge from a life without pain, and the thought of such a life made me envious. But not one of us escapes from this life without carrying some burden, without some ache of the heart, or regrets.
This is good news — this means that we all have a fair chance at experiencing joy in our lives. But it also means that we have to choose it. Joy is not something awarded only to some, and withheld from others. It’s chosen — more than that, it’s what our Creator wants for us.
“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
-Proverbs 17:22
The bubble of loneliness, anxiety, and woe I’d built kept me from challenging myself to mature beyond it, and it ended up holding me back quite a bit — it kept me from finding and keeping a community, from living out dreams I had, and it surely dried up my bones, leaving them weaker and weaker with each passing storm of life. I had been so sure this bubble would keep me safe, but it had only cultivated more worry, isolation, and hurt. And all the while, I’d had the option of choosing joy.
“Joy is not something awarded only to some, and withheld from others. It’s chosen.”
Choosing joy, as it turns out, is not an easy path. It actually takes far less effort to live with pessimism as our loyal pet, to allow the tiny glimmers of goodness in our days to go ignored, to expect the very worst out of life. Being joyful means choosing to see and bring light to the darkest of life’s seasons, to discover what we can be thankful for in our all-is-lost moments, to live with and rest in the anticipation of what will be well.
This doesn’t mean ignoring all of our hurt, refusing to weep or mourn, or neglecting our true feelings all to put on a happy face. Rather, joy can exist with our pain — it is our medicine. Practically every day of 2020, we were faced with a new worry, whether health-, financially-, or emotionally-related; this was the reality of every soul.
It was also our reality that even in the midst of a most strenuous, emotionally-taxing year, we had the opportunity to cultivate our joy, just as we always do; we have the option of reaching out to a friend to not only process our emotions, but find something to laugh about; we can notice and marvel at the intricate beauty of a blooming flower; we have the ability to test out and fiddle with a new recipe, to delight in the orchestra of flavors we incorporated; we’re given the gift of life everyday that we wake up, and that is something to be joyful about.
In short…
Let joy seep into your day, to permeate your every thought and interaction, to guide you through whatever battle you may be facing today. Choose to have joy.