Am I Allowed to Feel Joy?

MAMATA SUBRAMANYAM examines the role of joy in healing, resilience, and care amid global grief.

My favorite songwriters and authors often share a variation of the same sentiment: that much of their best work comes from moments of deep pain. Their heartbreak, anger, or case of the blues pen some of the greatest lyrics sung or the most profound scenes in a novel. It is those moments that history or the internet repeatedly revisit, analyze, or post as the caption of a melancholy photo carousel on Instagram (admit it, you’ve done this at least once). 

And while happiness is also the subject of great lyrics and book scenes, pain’s vulnerability often feels more relatable.

I make no claims that anything I write is profound or memorable, but the sentiment of creating from hard experiences resonates with me.

Looking back, anything I write almost always came from a place of despair. As a kid, many of the stories I would pencil into wide–ruled notebooks were dramatic, with a protagonist already immersed in some kind of intense personal turmoil before the story had even begun. Writings for college assignments were almost always narrated from a place of insecurity. And at the peak of some of my hardest moments came hundreds of iPhone notes filled with angry and bitter poetry and short essays underscoring the depths of my depression, the despair at being misunderstood, and the frustration at myself for not being able to overcome it. The pain was overwhelming, yet the writing is amongst some of my favorite things I have ever created.

Much of the last few years has been dedicated to healing, resolving the roots of my mental health issues so that the feelings of pain are no longer as acutely felt. I am very different from the girl who felt those negativities so intensely, but I am still very close to her, often examining her with a more gentle, reflective lens rather than so much criticality.

It is in those observational moments that one question always springs to mind: why didn’t I allow myself to feel joy?

Pain and suffering are readily doled out, but in some ways, society has set a standard of joy and happiness that needs to be earned.

“I got the good grade, but I can’t be satisfied until I’m at the top of my class.”

“I got the promotion and the raise, but it’s not enough. I have to make more.”

“I work out every day, but I still look good enough.”

“I’ve pleased this person, so now I can be happy.”

The ability to reach joy is shrouded by what I now understand to be guilt: guilt for not being enough, for not doing enough, and for not knowing how to define “enough.” The question becomes: how can I appreciate joy as a feeling of freedom to just be, rather than something that must be commodified?

In these last few years of gradual healing, I have often reflected on the period in my life when I felt the most uninhibited joy: childhood. I put myself in the shoes of my five, six, or seven–year–old self, breathing in the clean smell of fresh air and warm sunshine while sitting in a field of dandelions in the empty lot next to my childhood home. I take myself back to late nights with a flashlight and my new favorite book, hidden under the flowered tent of my bedspread comfort as I sneaked in just one more page, just one more chapter. I feel myself standing with confidence on stage at my school’s talent show, singing a Shania Twain song while boldly dressed in a yellow churidar. I hear big belly laughs shared with my childhood best friends, unfettered by any need for decorum.

I think about how simply everything flowed back then and how complicatedly wound up my life is now. I am untying the knotty threads of mental illness and resewing life with the more colorful strands from childhood that I have neglected along the way: being outside, breathing in fresh air, slow mornings that don’t immediately begin with my phone or an urge to work, singing loudly and without fear.

Nowadays, I want to write about my slow rediscovery of joy. But when I open my laptop to a new Word document, I’m struck by a new kind of guilt, triggered by the collective grief, uncertainty, and despair worldwide. I start to type everything I want to say, but stop, wondering how another note on a healthy morning routine reads when nature is screaming for us to look, look, look! at the pain we are putting her through.

The question becomes: 
how can I appreciate joy 
as a feeling of freedom to just be, 
rather than something that must be commodified?

We are at war everywhere. The climate worsens. The internet leads us astray. Why should anyone care about anything else? What will we do? It feels frivolous to focus elsewhere, and though I know life continues despite world crises, I wonder how anyone can move forward when so much is not normal.

Am I allowed to feel any kind of joy right now when so many of our brothers and sisters around the world are experiencing unacceptable levels of suffering? Is it self–serving to even be thinking his way? Yes? Maybe? I don’t think I’m trying to be, but I don’t know. I don’t know.

In a recent podcast episode, a well–known public figure was asked how she is doing at this present moment. She paused, then said something along the lines of, “In my personal life, I’m good. And I am worried because of the state of the world.”

In her answer, I somehow got my own. Life is filled with dualities, and when the more negative of those dualities is overwhelming, it becomes even more important to balance it with its opposite. Joy—especially now—is essential. If I am not actively trying to create joy in my own life, how am I supposed to help the people who need it the most find it? The more joy we can create and sustain, the more we will be able to remove despair. The more we can lead with it, the more we can heal. And the more we share it, the more we will remember that joy is not something to be earned, but rather to be lived.
 

The more joy we can create and sustain, 
the more we will be able to remove despair. 
The more we can lead with it, 
the more we can heal. 
And the more we share it, 
the more we will remember that joy 
is not something to be earned, 
but rather to be lived.