That’s the way that the world goes ’round / You’re up one day and the next you’re down / It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown / That’s the way that the world goes ’round

from John Prine’s “That’s the Way That the World Goes’ Round“

I want to step back from the intensity of the everyday find a little perspective. Truth be told, I have spent much of the last few years feeling like I am drowning. Professional upheaval. Political disaster. Personal growth pains. Existential dread. It can feel like too much. I can read and write about things falling apart and coming back together, again and again, and trust that to be so, but in living through it all it is easy to drown. Looking for heroes outside myself for fear of turning inward. Wrapping myself in toxic positivity like a warm blanket. Burying my head in any sand I can find. Absolutely loving the ease of blame and judgement. These are some of my favorite fixes. Those solutions are really just part of life’s process. Those answers are part of infinite questions. Those hacks are part of growth and evolution. It all adds up.

Joy is part of how the world goes round, too. It is a central to ebb and flow, falling apart and coming back together, wide-awakeness. In that way, the choice to be joyful is beautiful and subversive and radical and vital and life-giving. The choice to embrace joy in the midst of a terrifying mess of a world is more than basic survival, it is the path to conscious living amidst it all. Joy does not abandon truth, it amplifies the parts of ourselves that are often silenced by anxiety, anger, and fear. Joy softens the parts that become hard in a world of anger and cruelty and isolation. Joy builds something else. Thought toward imagination. Heart toward connection. Muscle toward swimming.