Joy Can Be Dangerous

At first glance, the very topic of joy ought to be one that we all clamor for. Yes! More joy, please. But, that might be a misguided sensibility that we want to rethink. 

Experiences of human joy always come bound by other human experiences which are often qualified as sorrow.* For example, when we know ourselves to be in deep and abiding love with another human being, there is no doubt a thread of joy that runs through that relationship. There is also, spoken or more likely unspoken, the very real likelihood that at some point that relationship will come to an end if by no other means than by the death of one of us, and that thread of joy becomes the experience of sorrow. 

Those of us who are pet lovers and consider our dogs and cats (and other lovely beings) to be actual members of the family bring those loves into our homes and hearts knowing that all things being equal, we will outlive them, and the day will come when they are gone from us. We have done that six times now, in our family and household. And almost four years ago, we went to the humane society and brought home our most recent dog member of the family. All things being equal, we will one day have to say goodbye to her for the last time. 

The point is, our loves, whoever they are, bring joy into our lives, and because we love them, those very same relationships bring episodes of sorrow to us as well. Zadie Smith rightly concludes, then, that joy can be dangerous. When we enter into moments of true human joy, there is always something precious to lose. Our most authentic approach to joy, then, is to acknowledge something like what we do every week in our worship services when we either line up to light candles or we pass the microphone around to speak into the sacred space of our joys and sorrows. They always come together. To speak of sorrow is to imply joy. If I speak of a love whom I have lost to death, there are always immediate stories of the great joys we shared. What we are less likely to say out loud is that when we celebrate a joy, there are also sorrows implied that stand together with them. 

The point of this reflection is not to be a kill-joy. It is to suggest that joy and sorrow travel together in the human heart, and that because they are so deep and intense, they are transformative. If we love, then we are eventually, almost without thinking about it, going to practice joy and sorrow. And they will change us. 

~Bob Patrick

*From his book, The Book of Delights, Ross Gay takes up an image of joy that he openly attributs to Zadie Smith in her essay entitled “Joy,” which you can read here.