Creating moments of joy

This post is written for the IndieWeb carnival; the prompt is Moments of Joy, by James.

Of course, for moments of joy, I first considered telling you about gender, because I’ve just spent a month celebrating that. But Pablo wrote about Pride for the same carnival.  Then, I thought maybe I could write about my new town, and the beauty of the mountains around them, and the quiet of the forests and the springs and the cliffs and the blue sky and the heat that makes everything look surreal, like a postcard and not like real life. But that’s not joy. That’s bonheur, which I’d be hard-pressed to translate to English; a state of happiness rather than an action of happiness. Joy, to me, is noisy and active; bonheur is deep and soft and an unending feeling of sweetness and bliss and serenity, closer maybe to the idea of wellbeing.  Joy was the pride parade, where we demanded justice for our own and for all the others who get hurt by the system in place. Joy was watching Nimona with my partner and laughing out loud and holding them in my arms knowing we now live close to each other. Joy is the taste of a homemade salad and the sound of a shitty mic at karaoke night and waking up with swollen ankles from dancing too much and cold rain falling on you when it’s too hot outside.  Joy is something that we need to create and nurture when we’re grown-ups, because we’re not meant to take it for granted anymore. When we grow up, we’re supposed to be well adjusted, poised, polite, silent. We’re told to look for wellbeing, and wellbeing is quiet and sensible. And I believe that having to create this joy outside of the regular life of a regular sensible grown-up only makes moments of joy more precious.