A Bright Golden Thread

Quest Monthly Magazine

When a weaver starts a new piece, she first must tie the warp strings on her loom to form an underlying base of the fabric she will create. Warp strings are the long strings that are fixed in place, while the woof or weft threads will be the ones she sends back and forth to create the body, texture, and design of the fabric. As she weaves, she might cut the woof threads, add in new ones, or change colors or textures. But she won’t cut the warp strings until she removes the fabric from the loom. Warp strings remain constant.

Musician Carol King gave us an analogy I love: “My life is like a tapestry of rich and royal hue.” I like to look back and see the patterns that have emerged across my life. There are patches where the woof threads are thin or frayed by sadness, poverty, loneliness, and disconnection, but those are also the very places where warp threads show more clearly. For me, one of those warp threads is joy.

Now, before we go further, let’s review the difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is a feeling, external and temporary. It comes from something outside of the self—a purchase, an encounter, etc. It’s what I call the “sparkly pony” emotion. It’s fun. It feels good. And it’s over pretty quickly.

Joy, on the other hand, is internal and it lasts. And it can coincide with other feelings, like grief. Joy can be present in the middle of a life storm, whereas happiness can’t survive the tempest. And while happiness can increase over a person’s life span, it is also strongly determined by genetics and personality. Joy is more of a constant, and people can strengthen it by learning to recognize its nuances.

So, to recap: Happiness: external, temporary. Joy: internal, constant.

Dennis Prager, in his book called Happiness is a Big Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual, makes the argument that happiness is a moral imperative. He claims that as members of society, we should strive to be happy not solely for personal improvement, but also as an altruistic endeavor to improve the larger society. According to Prager, we have an obligation to at least act as happy as possible, because it affects others. He likens it to a form of hygiene. And he contends that everyone is capable of it. Yes, we have problems, which we share with our close friends, but we shouldn’t inflict a bad mood upon anyone. He insists that happy people make the world better and unhappy people make the world worse.

I heard an interview with him and found his message stirring. It made me say “Yeah!” But something in the back of my brain was not agreeing so easily. I hushed it down for a few years, but finally went back and took a more critical look at his work, and things got a lot less simple.

Prager is a conservative commentator, and when I went poking through more of his arguments, I found some real problems with other things he says. But let’s just stick with his “happiness is a moral obligation” statement. Why was I so ready to swallow that one? What made it so compelling to me? Prager is Jewish, but his message is strongly consistent with modern Christians who would link an individual’s faith with their cheerful countenance. And, it’s awfully consistent with messages from the New Age movement that if we can control our words, we can control our perception of reality. And because we’re so powerful, we should choose to be happy. If we’re not happy, it’s our own fault because we’re not trying hard enough.

And at that point it is as if expressing anything but happiness is somehow being disloyal or inobservant of the grandeur of one’s God. So this whole happiness thing becomes a theological statement as well as a moral imperative.

But where does this leave people who are genetically or neurologically predisposed to depression or unhappiness? What are we to do with ourselves if we are simply unable to plaster an artificial smile over our sadness or despair? Are we failing when we fall into a funk? Are we being selfish if we get stressed? Are we disconnected from the God of our understanding if we’re overwhelmed? Does it mean that we are denying the presence of grace?

What are we to make of this?

What if joy might be an antidote to this heavy-handed insistence on happiness?

As part of my wrestling with these ideas, I sat down with a man I know who is living with depression and bi-polar disease. He’s funny and lovely, and rather like Eeyore. This is nice, because often I feel like Piglet. I enjoy being with him even if he’s not enjoying being anywhere. I asked him about joy, happiness, moral imperatives—the whole mess.

As I suspected, due to the neurochemistry in his brain, he’s not happy most of the time, and he has difficulty recognizing joy when it shows up. I think he appreciates the way that joy can accommodate other emotions, like grief. He’s seen grieving families have joyful memories even amidst their tears. But when he is in a depressed state, he’s just not going to recognize joy even if it perches on his bedpost and sings him awake each morning. He’s too occupied carrying around the heavy gray stone of depression.

Our theologies are very similar—variations on panentheism, which sees everything as a part of God, and variations on Process Theology, which recognizes that we are co-creators with God. When you go around saying that, it can sound all sparkly and mystical, until you get down to the fact that if everything is a part of God, that includes everything. Even bad smells and shin splints. Even the heavy gray stone that he’s carrying around.

So, even though it’s not particularly uplifting, my friend’s depression brings him painfully close to understanding his God. And he has discovered that if it comes down to being right or being kind, he’s choosing to be kind. He can’t do happiness, but he can do kindness. And the choosing is what allows him to feel that he is participating, not just surviving. Because kindness creates connectedness, it brings him about as close to recognizing joy as he can manage. His moral imperative is to be kind. (Maybe that is why it feels good to be a Piglet to his Eeyore.)

In the warp strings of his life, joy doesn’t flash as brightly, but the many strands of kindness are creating a steady pattern of beauty and satisfaction.

Sometimes even I get a bit Eeyore-ish. I’m generally a person of cheerful disposition, but recently, due to pressures of family and school, I was growing a bit testy, a bit snappish. Peevish, even. Family members began saying things like, “What’s up with you?” and “I’ll leave you alone now…”

It took a person outside our family to listen to my snarlings and snappings and point out the obvious: “Nell, you seem to have lost sight of the excitement of all the cool things you’re doing. Where is the joy?”

Joy? Arrgh!

Yes, I agreed, I had lost sight of any joy that might be attending the work of ministry, and parenting teenagers, and working on a good marriage. I was too distracted by the sticky bits of deadlines and a stupid cold and general fears to see the joy underneath everything. It happens.

I grumped away from that conversation with a grim determination to go find some joy, dammit.

I wasn’t particularly in the mood for joy, but I put it on my to-do list. Because I can do that sort of thing. There is nothing preventing me from paying attention to the joy that is a constant—a bright golden thread that is woven throughout my days on this planet.

An hour later I was buying groceries. That was also on my to-do list and higher up the list than “Find joy.” I got everything on my list, and easily had enough money to pay. I had remembered to bring reusable bags. And then, as I always do, I wheeled my full cart out of the store, quickly scanned the area, stuck my tongue out just so, pushed off, hopped on, and rode the cart clattering down the ramp into the parking lot. Eight feet away from a parked car I jumped off and took control of the cart. It is a little ritual I have.

At my car I loaded up the groceries and then spotted a brilliant crimson ladybug on the door. No black spots, just solid bright red. “Well, what are you doing here? There’s nothing but asphalt and cars around here.” I scooped it up and set it down on the dashboard of my car. I drove home while the bug marched around in front of me, a glowing red dot of independence. At home I coaxed it onto my hand and stepped out of the car. When I opened my hand, the tiny red beetle bug opened its wings and flew straight over to my favorite rosebush to find a lunch of aphids amid the roses.

And just like that, I saw joy in the middle of my life storm, in the middle of my anxiety and peevishness: the beauty of a beetle and roses, the deep satisfaction of bringing home food for my family, the silliness of riding on a grocery cart. Some of these joys were external, but they shone light upon the deep everyday gleam of these bright places in the tapestry of my life.

And then I gave thanks again that I can recognize joy so easily, pivoting in an afternoon. Maybe not all the way to sparkly pony happiness, but definitely at least to joy.