It’s recently come to my attention that, on first impression, I am a ray of sunshine. One new acquaintance recently called me “winsome”; another praised my “profound positivity!!!” Only once we’re real friends do you see the rest: the moment-by-moment struggle with angst, shame, worry, and judgment; the editor’s impulse to fix every moment, every scene, on and off the page; what my husband once exasperatedly called the “waves of negativity” that can sometimes spew from the broken fire hydrant of my brain and mouth. I'm writing this in mid-June, at what I hope is the tail of my annual spring depression spike, and the mere notion of Michelle As Sunshine just made me audibly snort in this library.

Even in a non-depressed state, my brain is often a welter of shoulds. Growing up in Christian fundamentalism, I came by this honestly—and running to the progressive end of the political spectrum, I’m afraid, hasn’t improved matters: now I rush to judge my neighbors and myself for both failing to exhibit the Fruits of the Spirit and for failing to recycle. I can shred a vacation or a sunset or a glass of porch wine with my worries about the world and my sense that I'm doing it wrong, that I should be doing more.

Here’s the thing.

No one I want to follow—none of my non-superhero role models, none of my teachers and leaders “at the margins”—not a single one of them—not Jesus or Howard Thurman, not Miss Kate—recommends or condones this behavior, this grinding, free-floating guilt. Every one of my justice teachers is described by friends and biographers as deeply joyful; the best movements and activist groups embody the good world they’re fighting for.

Turns out, anxious pissy judgment (even well-informed anxious pissy judgment!) serves precisely no one. And when I let it poison my opportunities for joy and fun, I’m not starving, like, white supremacy; I’m starving myself, and for what?!

SO. Part of this Table project is learning to find and savor joy, beauty, rest, and fun. Go get 'em.

Remember Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Collins, who, in his proposal to Lizzie, prissily enumerates his “reasons for marrying”? OK, my reasons for finding joy (told you! My brain is basically an amusement park!!!):

  • Joy is sustenance for Table work. Working on the Table, "getting closer to the parts of the communities where [I] live where there’s suffering and abuse and neglect,” will be hard. I'll need to know how to feed myself, and all the wise ones say we feed ourselves with contemplation, friendship, and joy. We can’t be eating crappy little happiness adulterated with guilt and anxiety; we need the full-strength stuff. Theologian and social-justice teacher Jonathan Nicolai-deKoning says that “our joys can seem small when set against the immensity of the challenges before us, but they may also be what sustain us for the uncertain journey God has set before us.”
  • Persistent, low-grade shame & anxiety don’t help anyone or build the Table. Anxiety can’t build joy. Work can; worry can’t. My free-floating guilt builds nothing, serves nothing, is too ephemeral and useless for the Good of the Table—but joy? Joy and the strength it helps build? Now, those are powerful.
  • How do I know what I’m working toward if I don’t let myself experience it now? The Table isn’t ascetic, like a Puritan church service; it’s a dinner party, abundance and goodness for all. I don’t want to work my butt off in advocacy and activism for something somber and prim. I want to recognize the Table when I see it.
  • Joy doesn’t always come naturally, so we have to practice. You’ve probably heard that the human brain is primed to stick to negative input like velcro and slide off positive input like Teflon; after all, from an evolutionary perspective it’s the negative stuff that can kill us. Learning how to convert moments of fun or delight into joy, then, is…a discipline. It takes work.
  • Teachers and leaders further from power than me insist on the primacy of joy. Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry, for instance, has made it her mission to resist capitalist, white supremacist grind culture (work yourself to the bone – numb out – repeat) through a stubborn devotion to rest. Joy isn’t monetizable or dependent on power; it’s a way of being that’s available and nourishing to everyone.

OK, so, homework.

Neuroscientists and psychologists have found that, for the brain to velcro itself to a positive input (for it to experience and build new neural pathways around joy), it has to “savor” that input for between 15 and 30 seconds. Here’s how, with help from psychologist Rick Hanson:

  1. Notice that something good is happening–something sensory, something relational, whatever. (I am just too squeamish to list suggestions like “damp curls or the snappy skin of a plum”; you know what you find lovely or fun, right? RIGHT?)
  2. Decide to 15-Seconds That Shit. Zero in your focus for the next 15 - 30 seconds.
  3. “As you can, sense that it is filling your body, becoming a rich experience…People do this in different ways. Some feel it in their body like a warm glow spreading through their chest like the warmth of a cup of hot cocoa on a cold wintry day. Others visualize things like a golden syrup sinking down inside, bringing good feelings and soothing old places of hurt, filling in old holes of loss or yearning.”
  4. Do this at least once a day, and notice its effects.

Do you already do this? How are you prioritizing deep joy? Does this free-floating guilt sound familiar to you? And DO YOU KNOW HOW TO HAVE FUN?