Ode To Joy.
This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.
I was catching up with a friend recently, talking about work and life, when she paused and shared that she hadn’t optimized her life for joy. It was a tough thing to hear and honestly, an understandable one. We are living through tragic times, with heartbreaking news often piling up faster than we can even process.
Joy doesn’t have much space in today's headlines.
But that doesn’t mean joy can’t have space in our days.
And yet, these days feel particularly full already—for me, too. As another friend shared recently, "It's as if Labor Day arrived and everyone shifted into overdrive." There's a collective sense of urgency, competing deadlines, concern and complexity that we're carrying into the end of the year.
In all that we're carrying, it's easy to feel that joy has no place and that we just have to get through these days until that dreamed vacation or quiet stretch.
But what if we all are thinking the same way, and joy ends up slipping to the bottom of everyone's lists? What then?
Seeking an answer for myself, I decided to reread an essay that David Brooks published back in 2015. It's an essay I love and have returned to many times over the years. In it (and across several of his books), Brooks draws a distinction between what he calls resume virtues and eulogy virtues: the skills we bring to work vs. the qualities that people name at our funerals—whether we were kind, brave, honest, or capable of deep love. We all know that eulogy virtues matter more. But, as Brooks points out, "our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies needed for career success than on how to build inner character."
So, back to this notion of optimizing our lives for joy. If Brooks gives us a framework, then last week I was offered proof of concept, while sitting in a packed Baltimore cathedral to honor a dear friend, Jeff Nattans, whose obituary reads like a manual for living well. As several folks said of him, Jeff "may have been cheated on years, but not on life." He embodied a rare combination of heart, smarts, guts, and generosity. He made the rooms he walked into better—more joyful and wiser. He was kinder than he needed to be and modeled what it means to be a good friend.
He also had that inner light quality that David Brooks often writes about.
If Brooks is right in his essay, that some people simply radiate an inner light—that they listen well, look after others, and carry themselves with a kind of easy, joyful gratitude—then Jeff had mastered how.
And I like to think we can, too.
As Brooks goes on in his essay, "luminous people aren't born that way. Their inner light is built, slowly, through the small things a person chooses to practice each day. Which means that the very best thing any one of us can practice, especially in hard seasons, is a practice of joy, and gratitude, and care for others.
So, here are three ways I'm doubling down on exactly that, and I invite you to do the same if you're seeking a little more joy in your days:
Don’t let a day go by. Too many times in recent months, a whole day has passed without me ever taking real stock in it, and once it's gone, there's no getting that day back. So, I've returned to an evening ritual of reflection (my chosen practice is the Ignatian Examen), which helps me pause intentionally, ask myself what each day gave me, where I seek to improve, and what I'll carry forward into tomorrow. There are all sorts of daily reflections out there, and I find the simple practice, whichever you choose, does wonders to help optimize more joyful days.
Find the good. If you tend to fixate on the challenges, then challenge yourself to find the good buried in them. It can help reframe how we see and understand a situation and illuminate entry points into how we can be of service in those challenges, too.
Change your tune. Music has a remarkable way of changing our state of mind, and science reinforces it. When you need a change of heart, try changing your playlist. As I found recently, one of my favorite artists has a song called Joy, and this rendition is worth watching. Go find one from your favorite artist or genre, too.
These little practices won't change everything, and they may not leave you feeling optimized for joy, but they do give us real ways to welcome joy into otherwise heavy days, and they may help point us closer toward those eulogy virtues that Brooks writes about, too.
Bottom line: Joy won't clear its own space on your calendar unless you choose to have it there. Notice the day, find the good, change your tune when needed, and then share it. I can think of no better communications practice as we enter this new season.
This post is part of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
