"Joy" Essay | Zadie Smith
Have I ever entered joy? Do I disappear into it? Joy thought and joy lost is the realization that “every subliminal moment”, as Smith describes, has no substance in the “harsh light of morning”. I couldn’t help but push against this as I thought of all the ways that joy has sustained me. But in so doing I was denying the reality that the harsh light of morning has blot many joyful memories. Like an over exposed photo dotted with ink blots, the joy is not always easy to recollect, and sometimes harder to cherish when I can’t discern the epic details it once held.
So, in an attempt to neither balloon the small pleasure in joy nor suffocate it of its substance, I want to embrace it all, like a true (slightly obsessive) dialectic. I could not have found a better source within the essay to practice than when Julian Barnes, a friend of Smith’s, offered some poignant words on mourning.
“It hurts just as much as it is worth”.
There is a tight relationship between joy and pain. They seem to intercede for one another, as if too much of one would exhaust itself. Reading Smith’s essay compels me to ease the want for joy; I search for it, long for it, resent the absence of it. Here, pain is exhausting itself and me along with it.
The ease, then. It might feel a relief to disavow myself from searching. Doesn’t joy find me? When I experience it with profound impact, it is rarely from seeking, but from allowing. The things I find most worthy do indeed hurt the greatest because I expanded to receive and reciprocate joy. You can’t do that though without exposing yourself to pain and displeasure, too.
I allow the rush. I allow the quiet of none. I allow the loud of pain. It’s quite unpleasant…perhaps this is a form of the great struggle Smith was talking about. Oh. Damn.
[Book of Delights pg. 43 | No. 14 Joy Is Such a Madness]