I'm not sure I actually believe that it is better for us to be happy.
You've never met her, but I know high school me well. I’ve said before that if I met her now, we wouldn't be friends. I'm trying to forgive her, though. It might be a stretch to say that she was doing the best she could with what she had, but she was trying. There's a lot to figure out when you're sixteen and hate your body and don't know if you believe in your inherited religion. I can't make excuses for her or her mean comments to her sisters and mom, her back and forth between friends she didn’t really like, or her promises to move far, far away as soon as she could. I can only say that lost and broken people do things that found and full people don't. And I think there's grace for her.
Despite her internal thrashing against the world, she was really good at Happy. She was the Happy Friend. She could put bounce in her step, a giddy smile on her face, and lightheartedness in her voice in a way that almost tricked herself into believing it was real. And maybe it was a little real. Maybe she did have some Real Happy.
Maybe I have just forgotten how to do that.
In 2022 and 2023 I set my words for each year. Well, a word that carried through both years because, despite my efforts, I didn't get it the first year. The word: joy.
“I used to be so joyful,” I told my fiancé, “I don't know where it all went, but it's gone.” This worried him. He thought it was maybe his fault.
I thought it was God’s fault. Or mine. Or both.
In 2022 and 2023, my faith was more real to me and grounded in truth that I actually believed than it ever had been. Shouldn't joy have accompanied that? What happened to the joy of the Lord being my strength? It felt like my weakness.
I didn't ever achieve joy. After 2022 and 2023, I stopped trying so hard to manufacture joy. I decided to just feel what I felt and let it be.
I think that this would have worked perfectly for me had I not been engaged to my fiancé. Early on in our relationship I made the mistake of telling him a phrase a highschool friend of mine used to say often: Feelings are not facts.
Blah.
On a very surface level, I could accept this to be true. Yeah, feelings aren't facts. Feelings aren't the boss of me. My feelings can come along for the ride, but they don't get to drive.
I've heard countless iterations of this same idea. Most recently from Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful: Feelings aren't forever. I believe in this version most. Now, though, when I have sunk myself nice and deep into the very muchness of a feeling, my wonderful fiancé will remind me: feelings aren't facts!!!
Blah.
“You're relentlessly pessimistic,” he'll say. I don't quite believe him. I think that optimism is a joke and that there's too much that is big and heavy to put on rose colored glasses each morning. But I hear what he's saying. Maybe blue colored glasses aren't the answer, either.
How do we do this, though? How do we move through the world without letting the winds of emotion whip us around but also allow ourselves to feel the depth of everything that needs to be felt?
I don't think I'm willing to sacrifice my feelings for stillness of the heart.
We went out to dinner with a couple who recently moved into town. The husband told a story of the wife’s emotional rollercoaster of a day.
“I'm just riding the waves,” he said. My fiancé laughed. He's said that countless times. But the wife is pregnant and hormonal and I am just emotional.
It's not that I don't want joy. I do! But not if it will numb me to every other feeling. Where is the middle?
Today, I am happy. I'm not working. It's sunny and I'm wearing a cute and comfy outfit. My mom says that when it comes to outfits, they just aren't cute if they're not comfy. I believe in this. I'm going to the library later. I'm writing now and drinking a coffee from my favorite coffee shop. After this, sermon prep. My fiancé and I are picking up our marriage license this afternoon and, after that, I'm going out to a local farm to pick up our milk, eggs, and butter for the week. I'm getting lunch with my sisters and parents. I should feel happy today.
But joy and happiness are not the same thing. I know this.
Happiness and sadness cannot coexist. They are opposites. I think you can go back and forth very quickly between the two, but you can't multitask these emotions.
I know this because not one hour after I finished writing this piece I received a devastating text message from my mom: A family friend had died in a car accident less than six hours ago. All the happy I had gathered from the sunshine and my outfit and fun plans disappeared. Sadness took over. The rest of the day was tainted with sadness. Blue colored glasses. The day I got my marriage license will always also be the day that he died. It will always be the day that my sisters, my parents and I sat at a restaurant called Sickies, sick to our stomachs and eyes red from tears. The irony of the restaurant name is not lost on me.
Can joy and sadness coexist, though? If joy is not an emotion, but a choice, can I feel sadness fully and still choose joy? If joy is my factory default, will sadness and anger and grief still show up?
Because as much as that crew isn't cute, I need them. I don't know how to be if I ignore them.
How do we do this, people? Did anybody get an instruction manual? Is there some daily reminder that you all signed up for that I didn’t, telling you how to be just happy enough for the day without losing sight of all reality? Can joy and grief really hold hands?
Your thoughts, words, experiences are always welcome here, too. My desire is not to preach at you, but to hold space for a conversation: How do we live well? How do you live well?