How to be "Alive! with Joy"

From someone named Joy who is 84, and still alive to tell the tale

Zen teachers have a saying, “It’s not happening now.” Sounds good, but in precarious times it’s a challenge to detach from the anxiety many of us feel. Catastrophizing, imagining the worst case scenario is in my DNA. Do you share this trait?

I recall a Buddy Hackett comedy routine from the early 1950s in which he riffs on Western cowboy & Indian movies. “Indians to the left of us, Indians to the right of us, Indians behind us…and ahead of us are Indians who hate us yet from the last picture.” Today we might paraphrase it, “Wars to the left of us, floods to the right of us, greedy billionaires behind us, and ahead of us is chaos yet from the last Trump administration.”

In other words: we’re fucked.

These are sucky times. Even though humans, both individually and as a society, have been through thousands of sucky times over the millennia, we forget that somehow we got through it (albeit not necessarily alive). Then, things changed; they got better, or worse. Then they changed again. And again. As Heraclitus said 2,000 years ago, “The only constant is change.”

As I scan today’s news I can catastrophize with the best of you.

Then I pull myself back into the present and notice what is true in this moment: I am warm and safe in my little home; I am not in pain; I ate a decent breakfast and have more food in the fridge. No one is holding me at gunpoint and I’m doing something I love. The bad things I fear loom in the near future, but right now, in my current experience, shit is not happening now.

The good news is that the present moment is all that we can manage. This present moment is the only point of power in which we can act to create a different future. So it behooves us to act in ways that make a better future possible. I choose hope. I choose joy.

How do I keep myself hopeful? How do I keep myself “Alive! with Joy?” Below, in no particular order is a partial list of the ways I do it. Maybe you can find in them inspiration for maintaining your own sanity and/or creating a better future.

• At the most basic level, at 84 I am still alive—breathing, seeing, hearing, feeling. I take my name Joy seriously. Also lightly, with a sense of humor. I love to laugh and seek people and activities that make me laugh. I think often about what it means to be a person named Joy—what brings me joy, how I can bring it to others.

• I try to avoid ruminating on my imperfect past, because it’s over and done with. My countless mistakes have taught me what not to do or how to do/be better. I’m grateful for the lessons, even if they were painful.

  

  The future cliff, per Robert Reich

• I pull myself back from future-cliffing by reminding myself, “Not happening now.” This sounds noble, but my technique is not: I go for the cat videos on Instagram or the Lego bricks in my closet.

• I take myself for a walk. I put myself in the way of beauty, seeking something that delights my eye (beauty, color, form, weirdness). Often I take a photo of it. (I have about 40,000 by now, and I can bring back many of those pleasurable moments when I scan through my photo library.)

• I spend time with people I love, with the intention of sharing something of myself and learning something about them. I fall in love with almost every one of my color analysis clients because we spend three hours together up close and personal, and I get to ask lots of questions that would be impolite outside of a therapy session. But I want to SEE them, and to make sure that they FEEL SEEN and represented accurately in their color palette. It’s such an honor to get to know people this way. (When was the last time you experienced really seeing someone, or feeling seen yourself? It’s profound.)

  

• I talk to strangers. I strike up conversations with the grocery checker, the person in the elevator, the guy sweeping the street in front of the coffee shop. I look them in the eye and thank them for their work. I compliment people I pass on the sidewalk: “Love your colorful boots!” “What a well-behaved dog!” “Terrific haircut—who’s your stylist?” As a young person I would NEVER have done this. Strangers were scary and it wasn’t cool to be so friendly.

• I do work that I love and that I believe is a real service. Each color session is a puzzle: who is this person? what colors would best suit their coloring? Does the palette need to be adjusted for their personality and aesthetics? And I get to play with color.

• Speaking of puzzles, I love figuring stuff out and learning new things. Lego play is a three-dimensional multi-sensory puzzle. So is cooking, sewing, or arranging flowers. Reading a good book is a puzzle—what’s going to happen next? How did the writer make this scene so believable? History is a puzzle—how the hell did we get here from back then?

• I practice doing things badly. I thrive on all the arts—they enrich my soul. However, my creative efforts always fell far short of my artistic vision. (Ira Glass speaks to this brilliantly—you MUST watch this little video!) Something major shifted when I took a drawing class in 2010 where the teacher insisted we start by making bad art—like scribbles. Scribbles, I could do. I wish my early violin teachers, my gym teachers, my writing teachers, etc had insisted I play lots of sour notes, hit dozens of tennis balls straight up into the air, or write hundreds of truly boring sentences, because doing badly was something I could always succeed at. No one informed me that you must produce a ton of shitty work (aka “practice”) before you get better. Again, watch Ira’s video.

• I live in a home that is right-sized for me. Just 736 sq. ft. (Downsized many times to get here!) Because it’s so small and has to serve so many functions, I can only keep the things I love and which work well. Maintaining order pleases and soothes me. As William Morris wrote in 1880, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

• Let that shit go! Not just physical shit, but emotional shit. Life is too short to hold on to anger and resentments. My anger is no skin off the back of the person I’m angry at; I’m only hurting myself. I say, forgive and forget.
  I gave this mug to my sister and she let it go, literally.

  

  Oops.

• Say yes! Whatever life throws us can be seen as a gift, if you can accept what is and be willing to improvise your next move. I was a naysayer/resister for much of my younger life until I finally screwed up my courage and took a bunch of improv classes. OMG. So scary, so liberating, and soooo much fun. Very zen. You have to stay in the present moment and pay close attention to your partners’ every move. Mistakes are celebrated (Imagine that!). Find an improv troupe in your town, enjoy their astonishing ability to create a fresh reality out of the slimmest suggestions, then sign up for some classes. To see how improv principles can enhance in your daily life, read Patricia Madson’s brilliant little book of zen-like improv maxims, Improv Wisdom

• I seek out people who inspire me, teach me, make me think, expand my sense of possibility. My two favorite podcasts do that: This American Life, with Ira Glass, and We Can Do Hard Things, with Glennon Doyle, her sister Amanda and her wife, soccer star Abby Wambach. (Wherever you listen to podcasts.)

• I do not like doing hard things and I do not like talking about hard things. But“We Can Do Hard Things” gives me courage. These three women are fearless about tackling difficult topics, mainly around relationships, mental health, parenting, being a woman in a patriarchal society. They often unearth assumptions and norms I never knew I had. Even if I think, “Nah, this episode topic isn’t for me,” I’m usually wrong. The conversation is personal, and yet universal. And they are very smart and very funny. You could start here with their Dec. 4 rerun of a lively conversation with comedian Melissa McCarthy.

• On giving money away.* I’m the daughter of frugal Boston yankees. Letting go of money doesn’t come easily to me, but I’ve discovered that I feel a lot better when I give it to support causes I believe in. Right now we’re getting bombarded by charities begging for our end of year donations. Since I don’t need the income and our non-profits do, I’m putting my money where my mouth is by distributing my entire IRA RMD (required minimum distribution) to non-profit organizations that bolster our democracy and civil rights (see below*). What about you?

• Could I please ease up on myself? The Protestant work ethic is strong in me. My life has been filled with Shoulds. If I don’t produce, do I exist? Do I matter? Oliver Burkeman’s latest bestseller, Meditations for Mortals is really helping me enjoy my limitations.

  

I hope you find some of these ideas worth adapting for yourself. If you were to compile a list for yourself, “Alive! with _____” what would you include?

We need one another and we all need to be in our best form to deal with what lies ahead.

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* On giving money away. My passions focus on trustworthy news, local journalism, public health and women’s reproductive freedom. If you wonder about the worthiness of a particular organization, Charity Navigator can help. The Knight Foundation lists a number of worthy non-profit news organizations, of which I support ProPublica (investigative reporting) and Report for America (placing journalists in local media in underserved areas of the country-so cool. The Columbian in my area has a reporter from RFA). I also donated to Mother Jones Magazine, a non-profit doing great investigative reporting. The Southern Poverty Law Center protecting civil and voting rights, immigrant justice, and fighting white supremacy. Women’s health and reproductive care: National Network of Abortion Funds. Finally two local organizations: Portland Playhouse (multicultural theatre and training programs) and YWCA of Clark County, WA.

I welcome your comments and your additions to what brings you joy and hope in these challenging times. What organizations are on your support list? Please share with us.

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PUT YOURSELF IN THE WAY OF BEAUTY

Someone on the staff of the Keen shoe store in my neighborhood created and painted the plywood shapes by hand for their holiday display. What I find beautiful is that it’s not inflatable plastic, not garsishly lit, and clearly not store-bought. It made me smile.