Because if joy is real without a reason, maybe suffering isn’t the only evidence of truth. Maybe our worth doesn’t need to be proved in pain. Maybe aliveness is its own authority, and maybe that’s the most subversive idea of all.

But here’s the thing: if pain teaches you who you are, joy reminds you why it matters .

The truth is I don’t want to live like that anymore. I don’t want my joy constantly filtered through tragedy to make it socially acceptable. I don’t want to preface every moment of peace with a disclaimer about the state of the world. I don’t want to curate my life through a lens of respectable sorrow. I want the full range. I want to be allowed to... See more

These joys don’t need to be explained. That’s what makes them feel forbidden. We live in an era of explainers, of podcasts, of 3-minute videos parsing the evolutionary psychology behind every instinct. But some joys resist explication. They are animal. Immediate. And in a culture addicted to justification, that purity feels like revolt.

I remember wanting to say: isn’t despair the easier sell?

Despair has structure. It has gravitas. It has citations. Joy, by contrast, is suspect, especially in literary circles where edge is currency and earnestness reads as provincial. You can write about abuse, death, alienation, generational collapse. That’s material. That’s art. But joy? Real... See more

We don’t know what to do with people who are both happy and smart. We assume they must be hiding something. That they haven’t thought deeply enough. That their analysis is undercooked. Emotional intelligence is measured by one’s capacity to dissect pain, not hold pleasure.

The joy that kicks off its shoes at the door of your sorrow and refuses to wait for permission. The joy that doesn’t pretend everything is fine but insists that something still is. The joy that can coexist with tears in your throat, that doesn’t need to fix or explain or decorate what hurts but still hums beneath it. The kind that sneaks in while... See more

I’m speaking of the kind of joy that dares to exist alongside pain... irreverent, uninvited, uncompromising, even a bit crazy.

The joy that kicks off its shoes at the door of your sorrow and refuses to wait for permission. The joy that doesn’t pretend everything is fine but insists that something still is. The joy that can coexist with tears in your... See more

And then, just as that strange fullness blooms, this sense that maybe, against every cultural expectation, I am content, something inside me whispers: hide this . As if joy, left uncamouflaged, might invite punishment. As if being visibly okay is a kind of betrayal in a world that’s still burning.

We are taught, increasingly, to write from the... See more

As if joy, left uncamouflaged, might invite punishment. As if being visibly okay is a kind of betrayal in a world that’s still burning.