Joy is Resistance

I have lately been thinking a lot about joy and how we can claim it, not in a spiritually bypass-ey way, but in the way that joy helps with momentum and breaks the freeze.

I also believe joy is political.

This is a gross simplification, but there are two kinds of people I often get to interact with. Those who put joy first and are most probably apolitical, and those who are political and feel the suffering of the world very deeply.

Lately, I have been feeling worried about these categories that people fit into. While they aren’t neat categories, we’re all starting to fall into a spectrum where it’s either this or that. I see it happening to me too. And I am starting to wonder if this was even a spectrum that naturally existed to begin with, or if it was manufactured as a way to keep us fighting against each other.

The apolitical ones prioritising joy are often mocked, criticised, and even ridiculed by the political ones who take on the moral brunt of the suffering in the world by being constantly engaged with it. There seems to be a moral virtue in being in touch with suffering and reality. People who are joyful, unaware of the world and its politics, are often called tone-deaf, privileged enough to be disengaged, and joyful at the cost of harm towards the oppressed.

Meanwhile, the apolitical group sees those who prioritise the world and its suffering as people who just keep talking and doing nothing, or people who are constantly fighting but making no difference. They don’t see the moral virtue in suffering and often see them as people who are stuck.

I am going to offend everyone here and say that there is a small grain of truth in both these perspectives.

You see, we all have tendencies that we lean towards. Some of us are the sufferers and some of us are the ones living in our bubbles. That’s normal. That’s how the world has always been.

Where I believe things got dangerous is how we started gravitating towards people with our tendencies and began polarising ourselves against people who don’t feel like us. The echo chamber effect, where the sufferers are suffering together and the party-goers are partying together. Again, gross simplification, but hear me out.

And since there is a moral virtue associated with being one way or the other, these two tendencies that once existed on a spectrum have now become two categories, like oil and water that can’t mix.

This is exactly what the higher-ups want, to keep us distracted. They want us to polarise ourselves further and further away from each other, because then we’re easier to control.

Divide and conquer.The age-old tactic, just used in a modern-world setting.

Now I’ll tell you where I have been on this spectrum all my life, and where I fall now.

When I was young, I was angry. I was angry with the world and I felt like I never belonged in it, so I was automatically upset and, in my own ways, political. Not necessarily in the way that I knew the right words for it, but in the way that I experienced the world, for sure.

As I grew older, my “sensitivity” was picked on, and becoming apolitical became survival.

Somewhere down the line, I found community. People like me, who feel like me. It became safe to unmask and feel political rage again.

But what I did realise was that as I was being welcomed back, there was also disdain towards whimsy. Towards joy.

Finding ways to exit the internet when we are all encouraged to stay on and perform our politics was an apolitical choice, whereas, being overwhelmed all the time, feeling stuck and frozen by the weight of the information about the world, was seen as the correct choice, the political choice.

But something that is becoming more radicalised and common in these spaces is the belief that being enraged and angry is a necessity.

During the years when I was possibly masking my pain and suffering in the outside world, I was paradoxically deep in therapy, unearthing my feelings in private with my therapist.

An important skill I learned during this time was emotional regulation, the balance between feeling my feelings without masking them, and learning how to metabolise them.

Sometimes that looked like releasing the intensity of the emotion. When the intensity left me, I was able to think about things differently and organically, without having to gaslight myself.

Two things happened simultaneously, and paradoxically.

A full acknowledgement of my feelings was needed. Politics was needed. The suffering needed to be seen and acknowledged.

And when it was, it often went away.

It was replaced with joy, excitement, and life force.

Now to come back to the part where I said I was going to piss everyone off.

The radicalised versions of us now, some political and some not, are at the end of the day just people on different ends of the spectrum, holding up mirrors to each other, trying to show the other what is possible.

The sufferer is telling the apolitical one that it is possible to feel beyond numbness and empty joy.

I can imagine why that aggravates the one who loves to ignore the suffering in the world. Because very often, those avoiding the suffering in the world are also avoiding the suffering in their own lives. What’s on the inside shows on the outside.

Meanwhile, the one who chooses joy, even if it is not long-lasting, even if it feels empty, is showing a mirror to the political sufferer that joy is still possible. That there are still things to look forward to and feel joyful about.

The people we despise are often parts of ourselves that don’t have permission to exist.

Two years ago, I was at my yoga teacher training.

I was not there learning how to breathe away injustice. I was there learning how to make it smaller, not the injustice itself, but the intensity of it, so that it could finally feel like something my size, something I could handle.

Spiritual bypassing is common in these spaces, but I was grateful to have an experience where my politics were welcomed.

It wasn’t about escaping the body or the emotions. It was about learning how to inhabit my body while not being overwhelmed and shut down by it.

It was moderation that was taught.

With social media and the echo chamber effect of us trying to find our tribe, or whatever that means, we have all become more radicalised, unable to make space for the truth that also lives on the other side.

While I am deeply political, I do prioritise joy now.

When I metabolise my feelings and they become less intense, it gives me the clarity and tools to go out there and make the change I want to see.

And sometimes this looks like actively choosing joy in moments of suffering, not as an apolitical choice, but as a political one, to stay hopeful.

Not in a delusional way, but in a way that will sail me through the storm.