Joy, Belonging, and the Refusal to Spiral.
Saying no to the narrative
School just ended last week. It’s officially summer. And while I usually brace against the loss of rhythm and the dissolving containers of time, weirdly… I’m not. This year, so far, I feel easier. Lighter. More relaxed. I can’t tell you why.
It doesn’t feel like the result of some deep internal work. It’s more mysterious than that. A quiet shift. Elusive, but also tangible.
One thing I do notice: I’ve been feeling a lot of joy in belonging.
Joy in gathering with other parents. In celebrating a friend’s birthday. In walking a windy beach with my kids. In checking out new dance spaces. In doing Zoom workouts with my dad. In being completely ridiculous with my family at dinner. It’s not joy because I figured something out. It’s joy because I seemingly have space for it. And, maybe more importantly, because I’m allowing myself to belong to it.
But how is this permissible?
Is this joy some kind of evasion? Am I ignoring global suffering or hiding from my own complicity? Maybe. Probably. Isn’t it also true that most of us carry a surplus of guilt, of “shoulds,” of the sense that we’re never doing enough?
We’re fed a constant narrative that the world is ending—and that we should be collapsing with it.
But what if that story itself is part of the problem?
What feels radical to me lately is this: to stop handing my energy over to the spiral. To not drink despair like it’s my only ethical option. To hold space for what is tender and good and alive, right here in front of me. To resist oppression not just by protesting it, but by refusing to let it dictate how I spend my attention.
I’m not interested in folks predicting outcomes. I don't know the future. None of us do. And what I’ve learned from years of improvisation is this: possibility lives in the space that stays open. Delight can still arrive, unannounced. Beauty can still find us, especially when we’re not looking for it. And letting myself experience it feels like a departure from what I think I should do.
And here’s the deeper truth: by feeding the narrative of a pending apocalypse, I’m helping keep it alive. Marching into that storyline feels, frankly, like the ultimate insult to the life force in me.
So I’m choosing something else: joy, belonging and awareness of what’s alive around me, because I want to reinforce the story that says “I am alive. And so are you.”
All of this to say—I’m feeling pretty happy. And I hope you can grant yourself permission to feel it too. Not because things aren’t broken. But because you’re alive. And we still belong to each other.