Joy Requires Your Permission
On saying yes to happiness
One warm spring day when I was driving in my car and didn’t have the energy to choose something to listen to on Spotify, I turned on the radio (a rare occurrence for me). Surprisingly, a favorite song of mine I hadn’t heard in years was playing: Mariah Carey’s We Belong Together. I rolled down the windows, felt the sunshine and fresh air on my cheeks and belted the familiar lyrics (off key), fully immersed in the glorious moment.
I then became conscious I was feeling what would be labeled as “happiness”—an experience that, at the time of this particular car ride, I hadn’t consciously felt in weeks due to a particularly challenging time in my marriage coinciding with financial insecurity in my career.
As the song came to a close a familiar thought popped into my head, You shouldn’t feel happy right now, remember?
All my worries and stress flashed back in my mind like a google slide presentation. The voice in my head reprimanded me again: Focus on your problems!
My moment of bliss was not only delusional but irresponsible.
I parked in front of the CVS and started crying, suddenly realizing how self-punishing I was being. How did I get to a point where I felt guilty for experiencing a few minutes of happiness? I don’t deserve to treat myself this way, I thought.
We were all raised in a culture that taught us in order to attain happiness in life we needed to follow a program:
Make a good amount of money, fall in love and have a family. Even if your plans stray from the status quo there most likely is still a formula, such as pursuing a passion or manifesting an abundant life.
And when plans go haywire i.e. you lose your relationship or the job isn’t going well or you still haven’t managed to write that book or accomplish what is on your vision board, being unhappy just makes sense.
We have been conditioned to put our joy on hold until have sufficiently earned it.
Even when we do get what we want, the happiness we get from it wears off and we think, What’s next? Eventually setting our sights on another thing we need to have or another goal we should reach or some way we need to change in order to be happy again. And the cycle repeats itself.
Other times our unhappiness isn’t the result of our own failures but the failure of other people, places and circumstances that prevent us from being happy: an annoying co-worker, a waiter that got our order wrong, a partner that didn’t wash the dishes, resentments from an unhappy childhood, the ex that never apologized, politicians behaving badly, climate disaster, societal injustice…the list goes on an on.
There is always something wrong. I am wrong. They are wrong. The world is wrong.
There is always a reason to be unhappy.
But this is not the experience we deserve. It is not our natural state. It is a mental prison we have been trained to impose on ourselves.
You were born enamored with the joy, magic and wonder of life. You were born never questioning you deserved care, nurturing and love. And then you were taught the opposite—you had to earn it.
That was a lie.
Joy is not a practice of attainment, it’s an experience of surrender: surrendering the belief that in order to feel differently something externally needs to change.
In order for that surrender to happen you have to give yourself permission to feel joy because you deserve it just for being you. Joy is an internal shift to the realization of your wholeness.
Being in the awareness of your wholeness i.e. aligned in the presence of your Higher Self creates a 180 degree shift in your experience of the world, allowing yourself to see the wholeness and love in others and in your environment. No longer trapped in the tunnel vision of lack you are immersed in the endless expansiveness of a higher state of consciousness. This is the true meaning of joy.
Allowing yourself to feel happy in an unhealed world is not selfish or irresponsible. It’s a radical act of defiance in an oppressive system. In order to live in a joyful world we need to realize that we are worthy of it. Joy is contagious. Joy is our right. Joy is our natural state.
Now am I saying you should never be sad, angry or upset? Of course not. But this essay it’s about trying harder to be more upset. Because I know that comes easy in these challenging times.
I am saying we have to start prioritizing feeling good about who we are! We are beautiful, magical, unique and powerful! We are wise, creative, thoughtful and caring! We are full of love!! And yet we deny ourselves over and over again.
We actually convince ourselves that our misery and addiction to lack will manifest something amazing. Meanwhile we miss out on how amazing we already are.
Recently I was in a yoga class and