Like love, joy is a vulnerable emotion and there can be a tendency to squash it down or minimize it with the rationalization that if one doesn’t experience the high highs, they won’t experience the low lows either. Sometimes moments of happiness are not able to be appreciated because they are interrupted by a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop – what Brene Brown calls foreboding joy.
But happiness is a feeling, just as much as sadness and anger and there’s nothing to be gained by guarding against it. Feel your feelings. Joy first and then anything else you have time for.
“Reach for the joy you have, revel in it. For it is scarce enough in this world.”
