What happened was really simple. I was doing a lot of things that brought me joy and I thought, well, this is the way to joy. So I did them harder. And if you do things too much, you go—a strength becomes a weakness. A strength exaggerated becomes a weakness. So I loved going out and walking in the woods and I loved painting cityscapes and I loved working on this community and on the coaching that we do. And oh yeah, I had took on a few new coaching people that I just absolutely adore and I thought, “This is the way to happiness. I’ll do it more!” And I got tired because the point of joy is not to give you a mechanism and just have you ride that thing as fast as it goes. The point of joy is that it’s a balancing place for the psyche, for the soul, for the body.

And finding that place of balance and following it wherever it goes is the way to stay in a place where life feels deeply, deeply meaningful.

So let me define this. Joy is not the same as happiness. Yeah? Happiness is what you feel when something you do succeeds or when you get well from an illness or someone you love comes back from far away or whatever. And happiness is wonderful and I want you to have as much of it as you possibly can. But joy is something deep, deep down. Joy is something that says, “Even when things go wrong, I am here on an experience-gathering mission in this world, and my soul loves adventure and is not afraid to suffer.” And there is awe and beauty sometimes even in a moment that is not happy at all. There is, I mean to give a fairly trivial example, I was talking the other day to somebody about beloved pets and helping them transition when they’re sick and old and have no quality of life and how I’ve done this with two or three dogs and I was with each one when the vet came to do the final deed, I was just an absolute mess, sobbing.

But there’s no badness in an animal, right? There’s nothing but purity in the relationship you have with your pet. So as I held my dogs and petted them and talked to them as they passed away, there was not happiness, but there was deep, deep, powerful love, gratitude, awe that they had come into this physical form at all and that we had known each other as spirits together in this physical reality. There was a depth to that relationship that I call joy. So it’s much more intense and much more subtle than happiness.

I love the poem by Jack Gilbert called “A Brief for the Defense” and he talks about the suffering in the world and how horrible things can be. And if they’re not suffering from one thing, people are suffering from another. And then he talks about how even in the terrible places people are finding reasons to laugh, children are finding places to play, and that instinct, he says, is telling us how to live.

When I go out for my walks, sometimes I walk past this caution sign, it’s just a yellow caution sign, and it says two words: “Watch children.” I always think, okay, it means if you’re driving, look out, there are children here. Do not squish them. It also means watch your children. They should be taken care of. But to me, more than anything, it means watch children. They are your instructors. And Jesus said that, and Lao Tzu, the author of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, one of the translations of his/her name is “the old child.” To find even the as you get older and older, more and more of the joy that children take in living even in terrible situations. And Jack Gilbert in that poem says, “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil.”

Think about that. I’ve thought about that a lot lately. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. So we’re at a time in our culture, we’re at a time in the American election cycle, at a time in the history of cooperation and cohabitation with different ethnicities and nationalities and races. And in this hubbub of energy, there is a thread of joy. And we must have the stubbornness to find the joy wherever we are. And I was thinking about the oddest times when I found joy. I wrote about one in my first memoir, Expecting Adam, right after my second child got his Down syndrome diagnosis. And I was six months pregnant and 25 years old and completely devastated. And I had an 18-month-old daughter at the same time, 18-month-old child, identified female at birth, not anymore.

And we used to get, my then-husband and I would get these alphabet letters with magnets and put them on the refrigerator. My oldest was very, very, very early reading. She learned to read, they learned to read when they were about 15 months old. I mean a tiny kid in diapers reading fluently is something to see. So we got all these alphabet letters and then a lot of them got pushed down air vents or we’d take them out on stroller outings, they’d get dropped in the street and we’d buy like another alphabet. And we had these odd assortments of alphabet letters on our fridge all the time. And one day I went in to get something from the fridge, and my then-husband had arranged a sentence out of the letters that were on the board. I didn’t say anything, I just rearranged them into another sentence.

And then when I went back, he had rearranged them into a different sentence. We didn’t say anything to each other about it. We just kept rearranging these letters. And there was a day, and this is one of the worst times of my life when I realized that I could use every letter on the fridge to spell out a perfectly formed image of a set of words. And the set of words was “Wall of grumpy eunuchs.” And I just thought of a wall of grumpy eunuchs and it used every letter and I just stood there, pregnant out to here, miserable, like hadn’t slept, threw up all the time. And I was looking at this fridge that said, “wall of grumpy eunuchs” and I felt the purest joy. I was like, it works so well. And I started to laugh.

And that’s the strange thing about joy. It can make you laugh in the darkness. Another time when I was sort of ghosting my entire community of childhood, I was supposed to go to a gathering where I thought I would be. I was leaving my religion. Everybody there belonged to that religion. I was about to take a lot of heat and I just decided not to go. And I went to a restaurant and I ordered some food and I started to laugh, not hysterically, but from a very deep, wonderful place, just laughing and laughing and laughing because I’d come back into my integrity. And that is not a strict moral place, it’s a place of joy. We do not need to find joy out there because when we start looking for joy, we realize we are joy. That’s why children laugh 400 times a day. And adults only laugh 15 times a day. The average adult, the average toddler.

Watch children. Laugh 400 times a day, and go where the joy takes you. So there’s this phrase “jump for joy.” And I used to think of it meaning you’re so full of joy that you just want to jump around. Okay, that’s fine. But I like to think of it as you’re on an iceberg that’s melting and joy is the boat going past you, and if you jump hard enough to get on that boat, you’ll be okay. You’ll find yourself. So wherever you find joy, wherever you see it, jump for it.

If whatever you’re doing with the political situation in the world or in the United States these days, jump for the joy, jump where the joy takes you. If you are having a difficult time, wonderful book by Lawrence Gonzalez, Deep Survival, talks about how people who’ve gone through great tragedies and traumas and plane crashes in the mountains and things, the people who live when other people die are the ones who can find something to laugh at joyfully. I mean, I know it sounds grotesque, but if you watch a movie, an adventure movie, one thing you’ll see over and over is the heroes joke. They laugh, they find joy. They have the stubbornness to accept their gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. And here’s the thing, that’s what gets you through this world because it tells you you are not of this world. It is something more lasting, more wise, more powerful, more loving, more infinite, more kind than your physical experience could ever be. It is transcendence. Joy is transcendence into a different level of consciousness. So jump for joy wherever you see it. Just take a real running jump.

Now let’s do our meditation and then I’ll take some questions today we’re going to do, if you’re new to this podcast, to the Gathering Room, we do this meditation by request every single week. And it starts with a Princeton brain researcher’s strange and wondrous question: “Can I imagine the distance between my eyes?”

So ask yourself that question. Get comfortable. And you don’t have to answer the question. Just ask, can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine the space inside the atoms of my body? That space takes up much more of me than matter does. Matter is infinitesimal compared to space. Can I imagine the silence? Can I hear the silence under every sound right now? Can I imagine the absolute stillness that holds all action? Can I imagine the distance between me and the other humans who are watching this podcast or listening to it now? And can I feel that within that space that fills me up and connects me with all other things, can I imagine joy? Deep, wonderful, awestruck, hilarious, loving joy because that is the final reality.

Thanks, people. That feels delicious. It’s like a little bath of energy every time. All right, so let’s go to some questions. Kay Lorlei says, “Hi, Martha. I’ve always wanted to ask you this. Can you tell when you meet someone who’s in integrity?” I don’t know because I don’t have all the facts, I don’t have all the data. But I will tell you that the closer I come to my own integrity, the more I get a very strong reading from almost everyone I meet. I’m not saying that, as I said, I don’t have the data. I can’t follow up and peer into their private records and see if they lie. But I have had very good experiences meeting people and interacting with them since I decided to live my life with total dedication to integrity. And I haven’t had as many of those awful relationships where you end up feeling exploited or resentful or stuck or obligated. It’s much more the free play of equals. It’s the same joy little kids take in playing parallel to each other, sometimes together. And nobody is playing the weird psychological or political grownup games. Everybody’s real. And if they’re not real, they don’t like being around my friends and me because we’re like, “Why aren’t you real? You don’t seem to be real right now” because we say what we think. Just warning you.

Okay, Lindsay says, “What’s an easy way to find joy if it’s been elusive for a while?” One thing, just preparing for this podcast, I was like, “When did I find joy in a time of darkness?” And I thought about the wall of grumpy eunuchs. And the moment, see, the brain organizes memories by category, kind of like the Dewey Decimal system, only you have your own so that a brain surgeon could go in and stimulate a little bit of your brain, and you’d vividly remember riding a pony when you were 10. And then the surgeon could touch the area right next to it and you’d remember a different horse that you met when you were a teenager, and all your horse memories would be categorized together in a separate physical place in the brain. It’s really amazing. So once you find your way to a memory of joy in a difficult time, or you could look around yourself right now for glimmers, Deb Dana’s term glimmers, things that trigger the memory of good things, of joyful things. So I can look at this amethyst crystal behind me. Oh, there it is. Or the little candles in the little round candles there. They were both given to me by people I dearly love. And so both of them caused this little lilt of joy. And I can remember that even if I’m having a hard day.

But it’s gold if you can find one moment in your memory of joy in a hard time. And you can get movies and read books where people are having a hard time and they do that deep survival humor that, oh I just saw for the second time the movie, The Perfect Storm. That’s a brilliant book by Sebastian Junger. Oh, it’s so good. And he talks about these Coast Guard rescue swimmers and how, Sebastian Junger was a journalist, so these Coast Guard sports or rescue divers would jump out of helicopters in hurricanes with waves that were so tall that they might fall 50 feet or they might fall 150 feet in pitch darkness to try to rescue people. And in order to do that job, they had to be joking all the time.

They lived in a place of joyful humor in this terrible, dangerous occupation. So read, it’s not in the movie, you have to read the book to get that. But go to any example of people who have been strong in a time of real difficulty, and you’ll find that character trait of latching on to joy and just refusing, having the stubbornness to accept their gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. And then you can sort of jump for that joy and ride with them on their energy. I wish you joy right now, honey.

Michelle in Magenta says, “I’m in the midst of a lot of trauma and I know that joy is critical to keep me moving forward. At the same time it seems foolhardy. How do I best listen to the wisdom of pursuing it?” Just think of joy as the deepest friend you could ever have.

I love Philip Pullman’s books for children but also for all of us, the Golden Compass books. He writes about a kind of magical parallel universe to ours where everyone has, their spirit is sort of manifested in a different animal and he calls it their Daemon, their soul. And think about having a beautiful animal of some kind that is your soul and that lives in this world without the pressures of human society that is just in complete sensory delight and that loves you absolutely. And think about, again, a pet that loved nothing more than to curl up in your arms and fall asleep. And it wouldn’t matter what was going on in the world, that creature was just pure love, pure joy. And that helps us through trauma to find that sweetness. Remember, it’s not the same as happiness, it’s a sweetness. It’s a steadiness that says, “In our essence, we’ll be okay.”

When you’re cuddling your cat or dog or gerbil or whatever it is, I’m not sure gerbils would really do it for me, but you can be with your horse, you can be with any horse frankly, the creatures around us have it and children have it. Watch them. Watch them.

So How’s Daisy says, “What about binge eating that brings me joy only temporarily?” So that’s not joy at all. That is, it’s a sensory pleasure that momentarily helps you forget that you are not in contact with your joy. And I remember I used to have terrible binge-eating problems, and I remember when I started sorting through my psychological junk, and I remember the day when I opened the fridge and looked at the food inside and thought, “I’m not hungry, I’m lonely.” And I just stood there going, “It’s not going to work anymore. Damn it. I could eat everything in there and I’d still know that I’m lonely, not hungry.” And I shut the fridge and I walked away. And it wasn’t like I’ve been perfect ever since. But really, whatever it is that you’re using as a sensation to blot out the lack of joy, you have my full approval unless you’re doing something illegal or something that harms another person, it’s just that it doesn’t work very well. And then you come out of it and you’re still not in touch with your joy. And the pain that sends us into those repeated activities that blot out our suffering, that very pain is meant to direct us into joy, into finding anything that we can feel joyful about. So it keeps us from our real work. Any form of addiction keeps us from our real work, which is to find joy and hang onto it and to return and return and return to it. Good luck, How’s Daisy.

EarthForaPillow says, “How do you access joy when the people you live with are sad?”

That is a really, really good question. First thing, I don’t remember who said this, but you can’t be sad enough to make a sad person happy. So being sad with them and for them, as solidarity, it shows compassion, but it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t help anybody out of sadness. So one thing, whenever people ask me about what do you do in a group of people, I always think of this bathroom in a house I lived in. The bathroom was completely pink. The tiles were pink, the rug was pink, the ceiling was pink, everything was pink. It was like walking into an open mouth, this tiny little pink bathroom. But I went there all the time to be alone. It was so tiny and no one ever went there. And I would go in there and I would find myself again. I would find my way back to myself.

That’s where I would have the stubbornness to accept my gladness in the ruthless furnace of whatever was happening to the people on the other side of the door. And I would do the kinds of things I’m doing with you now. I’d just relentlessly keep hammering away, looking for peace, for freedom, for delight, and for compassion. Self-compassion, compassion for others. And then you tuck that into yourself like a little warm live coal. You’ll be the person in the village who gets to carry the smoldering coal from which the fires are always lit and you keep that coal sacred because if it goes out, everybody’s screwed, right? But if you can keep joy just burning brightly in the center of you, you don’t even have to show it to anyone, you’ll be able to light the candles and the fires and warm and light and keep people happy and healthy even when they are sad.

Jindra says, “It could be quiet joy, right?” In my experience, joy is always incredibly quiet. It’s what we do with it. We are loud, but joy is space, stillness, silence. It’s made of joy.

Ginger says, “I’ve been trying to follow my intuition, not my to-do list. And when I redirect to what I want to do, I experience guilt, then quiet joy.” You have cracked the code. Yes, there will be guilt because the pressures upon you aren’t made for your joy. They might try, but only you can know what your joy really is. So you’ll pull away from culture and you’ll feel a little guilt. And if you’re wise, you’ll grab your joy and hang onto it. And then the guilt goes away and you’re left with the joy and the things that are meant to get done, get done, and they get done joyfully. When you’re holding joy, you can do the very same task and have it feel completely different to both you and everyone around you.

All right, I’m going to hurry on because I got a few more questions. Ellie Grace says, “Tips for finding the energy to do joyful activities and find joy after a nine-to-five workday?” This assumes that joy is highly physically active or mentally active. Lying in a lump with your dog asleep on your head is joy. Rewatching The Office for the ninth time with your best beloved is pure joy. Just lying flat and staring out the window at the trees can be absolute joy. It does not have to be in motion. It can be in the stillness and do what your animal self wants. It’ll always tell you the truth.

Okay, Lindsay says, “How does one imagine distance?” Well, that’s a really good question. You’d have to ask somebody who knows more about the brain than I do. Well, look at a wall. Look at the computer or the phone where you’re watching me. And now imagine the distance between your eyes and the thing you’re looking at.

Your brain kind of goes, the left hemisphere is like, oh, what is this? And then the right hemisphere comes in and goes, oh, this is what I do. And really it sort of lights up your ability to perceive all around you. But how does it happen? That is a mystery. We don’t understand the human imagination at all. It’s wondrous. It’s awe inspiring. So play with it. I can’t define it.

Diana Galactic says, “Martha, what would you say to those whose work has been fueled by joy but now can’t seem to reach it?” Pull back, withdraw, get still, get silent, rest until you feel like playing, and then play until you feel like resting. And then do that for the rest of your life. That is how it do. That’s how it works.

Two more questions. Dr. Donna says, “What if you’re not aware of what true joy feels like?” Keep looking, keep looking. I didn’t know what it felt like until I was about 32 and had been doing 10 years of self-help therapy. And I remember turning 32 and someone said, “Happy birthday,” and I went, “Oh my God, I’m happy. It’s my birthday and I’m happy. This has never happened.” There are great artists and poets and philosophers out there, and you get to jump in. You’ve got a human mind, you’ve got a freaking internet. Keep searching. Do not give up. Joy is your birthright. It is your essential nature, and it will never let you rest completely until you find it. It wants you back.

And finally, Catherine says, “What about the dopamine hits I get from checking things off my to-do list, but staying up late and then feeling less than joyful the next morning because I’m exhausted?” Step back from the to-do list, put “find joy” at the very top. Get still and get quiet. And as you go through the tasks, notice when you start to feel less joyful. That’s how I just lost my joy. I had so many joyful things to do and I did them all a bit too much. And the joy went out of it. And I was like, “Oh no! I’ve lost it.” But then I rested for a couple days as much as I could and, “Oh, it’s back. Here it is again.” Because it never went anywhere. I was the one who wandered away. As Rumi said, “You were the one who wandered away into the darkness. The light never goes anywhere.”

You are joy. You are that light, and you are the wonderful friends I love in the Gathering Room. So come join our tribe in whatever way we have: coaching communities, whatever. There are ways that we can get together and share our joy. And guess what? The effect is not additive, it’s multiplicative. Go look that up if you don’t know what I mean, because what joy does, I love you and you bring me great joy, and I’ll see you again next week on The Gathering Room. Bye!