The Courage to Make Joy the Foundation
This week, as we continue exploring the inner landscapes that shape our lives, I want to sit with the idea of joy. Not the loud, ecstatic joy, happiness or excitement that bursts in like fireworks - but the quieter joy that lives inside us like a warm light, constant and soft.
Joy is one of the most delicate emotions we experience. We can notice it in the smallest moments: the way morning light lands on a table, the steadiness of a familiar voice, the sensation of belonging, or the simple relief of being exactly where you are. These moments matter not because they remove the complexities of life, but because they reveal something deeper within us—an inner orientation that is joy itself.
But joy can be complicated.
Brené Brown often says that joy is one of the most vulnerable emotions we feel. When joy touches us, many people immediately tense with a quiet internal warning: “Be careful. This could disappear.” She calls this foreboding joy—the instinct to brace for loss. Joy exposes what we cherish. And with that exposure comes the awareness of fragility. Feeling joy means caring, and caring always comes with risk.
Yet if we want, joy invites us into a different kind of relationship with life.
Joy that is foundational isn’t about chasing peak moments. It isn’t the sudden high, the extraordinary event, or the momentary delight. Foundational joy is more like the steady undercurrent running beneath the surface of things—something shaped over time by how we pay attention, how we connect, and how we return to ourselves.
And importantly, living with a stable sense of joy doesn’t mean you never feel sadness, stress, or doubt. (Story about Been in the struggle) It doesn’t mean bypassing the hard parts of being human. Instead, it means that your emotional life becomes more resilient. Joy becomes one of your inner resources—something that helps you bounce back, reach out, keep going, and stay connected to the things that matter. Joy doesn’t cancel sorrow; it counterbalances it. It reminds you that you can hold both. IN his book the Prophet Kahlil Gibran says about Joy “your Joy is your sorrow unmasked. The selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears”
This kind of joy doesn’t ask you to pretend everything is fine.
It asks you to stay awake to what is good, even when life is complicated.
It doesn’t ask you to suppress fear.
It asks you to let beauty coexist alongside your uncertainty.
Joy isn’t asking you to ignore pain.
It’s asking you to make room for wholeness.
Joy isn’t asking you to pretend everything is perfect.
It’s asking you to let yourself feel what is good, even while the rest is still unfolding.
Let joy be a companion this week—even if it feels tender, even if it stretches your heart in uncomfortable ways. Let it surprise you, soften you, and remind you that you have permission to feel joy in times of sorrow, to feel joy in times of uncertainty, to feel joy in times of grief. To let it always be part of who you are as you experience the diversity of what it means to be human.