For the last few months, small joys have been my sustenance… Often these small moments fade from view with the passage of time. What makes it into our memory banks are the bigger things—either the zeniths or the nadirs—but what we end up longing for and leaning on in hard times are the little quotidian comforts and delights; they lift and carry us from day to day. Noting these joys is a muscle I’ve been consciously trying to exercise: training the eye to see them and training the mind to hold onto them.
I do want to make a distinction here between the practice of celebrating small joys and the culture of “toxic positivity,” where we’re told to be ever-grateful, to always search for the silver linings, to put a positive spin on all experiences, even the profoundly tragic. The author Barbara Ehrenreich has written critically about this cultural phenomenon with far more nuance than I can in this missive, but it’s a topic I’ve thought a lot about, especially in these last months. It’s easy to feel pressure to be someone who “suffers well”—grateful and graceful and stoic 24/7. But that doesn’t allow us to exist fully, to experience the full range of the human condition, from happiness to grief, from gratitude to envy.
I love observing tiny daily joys because it feels natural and easy, not forced, not pressurized, not all or nothing. And not only has the practice helped ease this difficult passage, it’s helped me identify what lifts me up, and then I can cultivate more of it. (Read the rest of her essay here.)
— Suleika Jaouad, from “Back Again” in “The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad” (September 1, 2024, Substack).
“Suleika’s career aspirations as a foreign correspondent were cut short when, at age 22, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She began writing her New York Times column “Life, Interrupted” from her hospital room at Sloan-Kettering, and has since become a fierce advocate for those living with illness and enduring life’s many other interruptions.” From her bio here.
Notes:
- With gratitude to Mary Ann for sharing. Thank you.
- Portrait of Suleika Jaouad from her Facebook page here.
