Spark joy

The morning after the launch party for my first book, one that was years in the making, I woke to a flurry of text messages from friends who had attended. I wrote them back, thanked them with all the requisite emojis. I felt light — a sense of relief, pride, possibility, gratitude. I joked that it was an unfamiliar feeling — contentedness, happiness, fullness. But it was like a new set of possibilities opened up in me. Is this what it is like to feel seen, held? Is this what it is like to belong?

In my day job(s), I write a lot: to explain and clarify; to reframe, demystify; and sometimes, to inspire — to provide a vision for a better future. I find the phrase that recurs in mind is "just and joyful." It is a useful phrase, for its alliteration, its pleasing rhythm, its succinctness, and it is unimpeachable: who could object to justice? To joy? But in the day-to-day work of an organization, no matter what its finely-crafted mission statement might promise, the necessary and often dulling tasks of building and sustaining the systems and processes to support the work, is not what many would consider to "spark joy."

But I do not mean to dismiss that necessary work. It is the foundation for action. I know "administrators" can sometimes be the immovable obstacle to completing even the smallest purposeful actions, but I believe that setting those parameters — that scaffolding — with intention and care is the only way that justice can be invoked on any scale beyond the individual. It is not only useful to our goals to articulate the change we want to see, but the process by which we arrive at that articulation requires us — whether it is a room full of administrators discussing budgets, or a faculty group discussing curriculum, or students planning a sit-in — to be very specific about what we mean. I want to suggest: In that specificity, joy is possible.