Squeeze joy into the in-betweens

One of the things that frightens me the most in this little life: this metronome.

Let me set the scene: It’s one of the last episodes of Carol & The End of The world. Carol’s HR person is going to bed with a clock/metronome ticking beside her - measuring time, keeping beat, reminding her of the world she needs to catch up with. (There’s a plot twist at the end of this delightful Netflix series that involves this HR character… strongly recommend a watch! But I digress.)
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A Fear and a Reframe

There are few things in this life that deeply scare me. But, I’ll admit: I’m scared to the centre of my bones of waking up every morning and feeling like I constantly need to play catch-up with my life - basically, living according to the beat of some internal clock that keeps. on. ticking.

“But Raha!!! Obligations are the bounds of any normal person’s life.”

“Won’t trying to constantly seek “being in the moment” make us mess up our obligations, and make our life fall apart?”

Good questions, imaginary friend. Let’s change the framing- watch how those questions dissolve.

For me, trying to live a Good Life is not a matter of deciding whether we should be “coping” versus finding joy. It’s not an either-or.

Rather, it’s a reframe, around a simple fact: The muscles that we use to cope with stress are very different from the muscles we use to find joy in the moment. And very often, we forget.

In this little life, I want to make sure that I don’t forget to awaken my muscles for finding joy, all because I’ve unknowingly resigned myself to a life of coping.

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The Science

Let’s call coping the thoughts/behaviours we use to deal with stressful situations. Studies show that negative information, used in order to prevent and deal with setbacks, is so much easier to keep at the forefront of our mind than positive information. It’s more quickly processed, remembered, retrieved, passed on as advice (“Don’t do this, or else! Do this, or else!”).

Also, coping requires a very opposite set of skills to deal with bad times (“this will pass soon!”) than leaning into joy (“let me lean into this moment and stretch it out!”)

When leveraged wisely, stress is one of my favourite motivators - and a very real reaction to a messy world. The problem is not that we cope. As the psychologist Fred Bryant notes: The problem is that we can’t turn that coping switch off. Without knowing it, we may default to a primary mindset of coping, because we feel like life constantly requires it, without realizing the very different kind of internal processing joy requires. We might, as a result, treat our capacity for joy as an exception or an afterthought.

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We’ve All Got Muscles

Of course, it can be self-sabotaging to think that we need to think about savouring life. Cue next thought: Why am I not savouring life enough?! Does it show?! No fun.

That’s why it’s so important to look at our capacity to experience joy and mindfulness as a muscle, rather than a goal to attain.

Suddenly, joy doesn’t become a milestone to compare or long for, but a capacity to notice and tend to. Joy becomes a muscle we can prioritize.

A Beautiful Workout: Slowing Down

Chasing joy might ask us to surround ourselves with more joyful experiences. One thing I’ve learned only in the past year: a very sneaky, low-effort way of getting more joy isn’t by chasing more experiences. It’s by slowing down, and stretching a beautiful moment out. There are so many of them!

And so much more of that easy, effervescent joy can come our way if we simply exercise our muscle to slow down during ordinary moments. Fred Bryant has a beautiful discussion about this with Shankar Vedantam on The Hidden Brain.

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A New Route to Joy: the Doing Nothing After Yoga

I used to hate yoga. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that I would oscillate between feeling super restless during yoga classes, and… falling asleep. (Not kidding. I still remember the time I tried hot yoga with my lovely mother-in-law and fell asleep in the middle of it.)

Upon moving to Montreal, I happened across a hot yoga centre that connected me with a cute cross-section of the city’s folks, largely through its community classes (we had university students attending alongside 9-5ers, and retirees! I absolutely loved to see it-) and Genuine Vybez. Also, the heat felt like such a cute change after trekking over from home in the morning, sometimes walking through a blizzard in the winter to get there. Suddenly, feeling opened to a cute community, I started more frequently attending its classes, eventually walking over every morning. Its instructors were paradigm shifts just through the way they encouraged us to listen to our bodies. Suddenly, I’d find myself lying on the ground after class for just a few minutes at a time - sometimes almost asleep, just like when I first encountered yoga, but this time less restless, and much more full. Yes, my body began to strengthen and change a ton through the discipline of more intense classes, but it’s this calming effect on my mind that I noticed most of all.

I was being told to lean into moments of not doing much, and it felt energizing. Weird.

Simply lying down after a rigorous class showed me the difference between chasing joy, and leaning into moments to let that joy come to me- whether sitting still, or jumping up when dancing. It’s a massively energizing reframe to find joy in abundance.

A warm community, some disciplined guidance, a push out of my comfort zone, an acknowledgment of a sweet moment, a few minutes of intentional resting a day/week = an opportunity to strengthen our muscle for savouring moments.

Contrary to what mantras of “chasing joy” might tell us: We don’t need much to lean into joy. It’s also a capacity we can grow throughout our life - we get so much from leaning into joy.

As you go into the week:

• What’s one thing you can do a few times this week to extend your moments just by a bit?

  • Perhaps it’s by setting time aside to savour a cup of tea in the morning - or going to a yoga class - or whatever feels right for you. Consider surrounding yourself with community if that ticks your box, as it does for me.

  • Or - maybe it’s a minute each week spent watching Kylie Minogue’s old videos because they give you a rush of nostalgia. Who knows.

• What systems might you use to hold yourself accountable to incorporating these rituals into your day-to-day, even when “coping” might fight to take over?

  • Something that worked for me at the very start of yoga classes: Booking early morning session that have a penalty for cancelling within 2 hours of class starting, such that the window closes before I wake up. No lazy morning excuses! And who cares - you’ll be lying back down by the end of it, if doing things right!

Good luck, cuties. Save the ticking clocks for piano practice instead!

Much <3,

Raha