Joy as a principle of ethical living

I’ll start backward. That seems somehow fitting. I’ll start from the bottom up.

When I wrote my thirteen practical principles for living well, I thought about a lot of things. Thirty years of thought, testing and reevaluation went into that. But in terms of which principle I put first, I wrote them in the order they occurred to me. I didn’t think of one as more important or primary than another.

I find it interesting then that they have a clear order as listed and I have no desire to change it. It isn’t a hierarchy though. I don’t see any of these principles as “number one” and none is dispensable. It’s more about the parts of life they address.

Image via Pixabay

The first three principles (balance, reciprocity and integrity) address our relationship to the earth and the cosmos, to life itself and to our spirituality. They are the biggest concepts, the ones that came to mind first because after all the years of pondering they were the hardest to nail down.

The second three (empathy, nurture and solidarity) are mostly about our relationship and actions toward other living beings, both of our species and of others. It is personal but also general. These too came quickly to my mind and developed from my years of intercultural experience and from the animals and plants I live with.

While I think society could be much improved with the first three spiritual principles, it could well become a ruthless and hard-edged world if based only on things like reciprocity, integrity and balance. Empathy, nurture and solidarity make for the kind of world I would actually like to live in.

The next three (interconnection, justice and openness) are essentially the political ones. This is about our relationship to society as a whole. Certainly any of these principles could be political but taken together these three outline a socio-political creed—one which emphasizes the needs of the whole, a world without coercion and the inevitability of constant change.

Finally, there are three (resilience, patience and joy) which are about a person’s relationship to themself. There is one final principle, of course, to make thirteen. That is mystery, which stands alone because it is the essential reminder not to be too sure, never to become a cult or adopt the arrogance of believing I have it all figured out—even when the occasional good day makes it feel that way.

So, this is why I say that beginning with joy is starting backwards. Except for mystery, which like the Fool in the Tarot doesn’t really have a place in any order, joy came at the end of my list.

Starting on the path

It has been a decade now, since I made one of the most important decisions in my life. It was not the decision to go to college or leave college or get married or have kids or leave my country or buy a home or quit my day job and start my own business.

All those were important decisions. But this one has done more to change the way I live. Ten years ago, I gave up on social approval. I didn’t give up on manners or small talk or trying to reach out to others. I just gave up on any of it actually working to make me socially accepted.

This was after decades of exclusion. As a kid, I was heavily ostracized because of my thick glasses and extreme nearsightedness. As an adult, I was able to pass for about ten years in my twenties until my vision impairment and other physical disabilities became more pronounced and visible. But even then it was a constant struggle to pass.

As a new mother in my mid-thirties I found myself snubbed in mothers’ groups because of my disability, because I was a foreigner and because my child’s skin didn’t match mine. That isn’t to say that I was universally rejected. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it was when I was a kid. I have wonderful, life-long friends who just don’t live where I do. And locally there were a few other women I connected with.

The giving up wasn’t about not trying. It was just about not hanging onto it and not hinging my happiness on social approval. Up until that time, I had truly believed that a person’s happiness could be measured in the quality—if not necessarily the quantity—of their friendships. I had also believed that goodness. honesty, loyalty and a full heart would win through in the end, that I would find those who would value me if I kept faith.

Those sound like such good things to believe. And yet those beliefs made me miserable because my experience for thirty years was that I was a failure at it, no matter what I tried. My friends and I tend to be people on the margins of society. We love one another, but because of being on the margins, we don’t generally get to congregate close together and the people I live among never fully accepted me. And I realized that they never would.

So, I let it go. And I decided to base my goals in life on something else. I decided to pursue joy.

Beware here. When I say I pursue joy and encourage others to pursue it as well. I do not mean the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, momentary whims or entertainment. These things are not joy and pretty much always lead to eventual misery if they are over.indulged.

Joy is different. Joy is the deep love and gratitude that you feel in a beautiful moment full of life and passion. Joy is the satisfaction you feel when you lose yourself in work that it is purposeful and true to your own gifts, work you enjoy. Joy is often, but not always, in the connection with people you love, friends and family. Joy is also an open connection to other living things and to natural places.

Joy is both fleeting and lasting. It often lasts only a moment when you notice it. But it also does not destroy its own potential. Unlike the enjoyment of pleasure, which can when taken to extremes lead to addiction, destruction and exploitation, joy feels different and it doesn’t destroy.

Both pleasure and joy are sweet. But pleasure is like salted-caramel ice cream—a treat that leaves me feeling heavy but properly pampered. It costs money—a lot where I live—and I love it, but I also know that if it disappeared forever I could still survive.

Joy is like fresh homemade bread with honey. The sweetness fills my senses. It nourishes and I know that it is attainable directly through my connection to the land with work and focus. There is something in it, the real food of the spirit that I know I can’t live without.

I do use hedonistic pleasure. I eat sweets—specifically salted-caramel ice cream—to celebrate or to get through a tough time. I love to lie back and watch a good film or an old, beloved TV show. And in moderation these things are good. They just aren’t joy. They have more to do with another principle we’ll look at another time, that of nurture. Our bodies and souls need some pampering, but that isn’t what joy is about.

Joy often comes at the expense of that pampering. If you’ve ever worked for twenty-hours straight on an artistic endeavor in a fit of joyful passion, you’ll know that joy isn’t self-care and needs to be tempered by it. The same applies to that joy that comes from stunning natural places, often reached through considerable strain and discomfort.

Joy is the positive side of passion. Maybe that’s the best definition.

Essentially, I found that you can have a pretty good life in all of the ways that are supposed to matter—material comfort, respect, family, friends, purpose—and still feel empty without moments of joy or a joyful passion underlying it.

When I decided to give up on social approval the important part of the decision was that I decided to live my life for joy, even if I was not accepted.

I have continued to put energy into social things, but it is a limited amount of energy. When I reach out to people and I am rejected or dismissed out of hand, it stings but I refuse to let it derail my life again. When I try to build local community and my efforts are rebuffed, I don’t let it take my happiness anymore. I have found a great many joyful things that don’t need anyone else’s approval.

After fifteen years of building it bit by bit, there are many things in my home that give me joy. Last year, I finally had the raised bed that I have dreamed about since I was about six years old built. I feel real joy sitting on it in the afternoon sun, studying the herbs from one of the books I don’t have enough time to read very often. I also get great joy from finally finding the key to successfully making sour cherry jam, which my husband always said was his favorite.

I feel joy every morning as I walk up the hill to feed the chickens, not because I love chickens that much. But because they force me to get out and experience the morning air and light earlier than I would otherwise. I feel so fortunate to be one of those people who lives on a hillside with a view of a misty valley and mornings that are sometimes clear and sometimes rainy with a gritty wind.

The hard thing about joy

What gives you joy will inevitably be different than the things that give me joy. My husband often mentions that the things I take such joy from are drudgery to him. But then he hasn’t found his joy. So many people today don’t know what would give them joy or even believe that anything would.

It isn’t easy. I certainly spent enough years being miserable and I probably would have thought “joy” as a principle of ethical and practical living was a trite and simplistic slogan. But I’ve been living it for ten years now, and it has helped. It hasn’t fixed everything, but it has helped.

The other hard part about joy is that it is so often fleeting. Early this summer my ducks made babies in a nest right outside of my window—the one where I both sleep and read in stolen moments. It was lovely to listen to the tiny ducklings with beautifully speckled backs pecking around through my rock garden. I put food and water near the nest every day to make sure the mother duck would not have to go far.

But still they didn’t survive. I am not sure what got the babies, though I suspect a surly neighborhood tomcat that prowls loose. I could easily see the entire incident as negative, but I know the truth. There was joy. There were moments of joy both for me and the ducks. And sometimes that’s just the whole reason we live—those little moments.

A year ago, I was deeply enmeshed in Extinction Rebellion, an organization founded on good ideals and flawed humans. For a time, the local group gave me more purpose, hope and social acceptance than I had known in well over a decade. Not only do I fully believe in the vision of an equitable future and the struggle to mitigate the devastating effects of climate change, there were moments of pure joy when groups of people worked together creatively and harmoniously.

For months I was respected as a healer, a teacher and an effective organizer. And there was definitely joy in that.

But the same old prejudices crept in and eventually those who felt threatened by me and could not accept me as anything but a symbol of the group’s charitable tolerance toward a disabled person in a corner of the room held sway. I lost it all again.

And it would be easy to be bitter. But the joy that the group created and that I knew during that time was real. Sorrow doesn’t negate joy. They switch places over time or even coexist simultaneously.

A friend who also left the group recently wrote and asked me for comments. I will always tell the truth about the prejudices and exclusion that forced me out of the group and ultimately decimated the local group after I was gone, but that truth goes hand in hand with the real joy that existed for a time.

Joy is often fleeting. It is real for all that. It also lasts.

I list joy as a principle of ethics because it is a focus that doesn’t betray. If you can separate joy from pleasure, entertainment and seeking quick comfort, living with joy as a goal that provides just the sort of true compass that we need to stay on our path.

That’s what ethics should be about in the end. I don’t subscribe to a religion of angry gods or an ethical framework of “shoulds.” We strive to live ethically, in the end for ourselves. We teach our children to live ethically for their well-being. Religions that make ethical and moral laws based on punishment or even a reward after death are, in my view, fraudulent methods of control and oppression. Real ethics has as its objective, not control, but happiness and genuine peace of mind.