The discomfort of joy
“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
I remember having to memorise this piece of scripture from Corinthians when I was seven or eight years old. I don’t remember the rest of it, but I never forgot that line. I didn’t really get it then, and lately I’ve found myself thinking about it again — wondering why love is supposedly so much greater than the other two. Because surely you can’t even have love without hope and faith?
I also think whoever wrote this (and let’s not open a religious debate here) forgot a fourth one: joy.
Recently, it’s come to my attention that joy and hope might actually be the most terrifying emotions to experience. And I want to talk about them — partly to make sense of that, and partly in the hope that naming it takes a bit of the terror out of it.
Hope and joy feel so fucking scary because they’re exposed. They’re vulnerable. If you’re anything like me, you’re deeply suspicious of things going “too” well. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. You downplay achievements because we all know pride comes before a fall, so best to just chill or the good thing disappears.
The wild part is that we work so hard to build lives that contain joy — and then when it shows up, we refuse to look it in the eye. As if acknowledging it will jinx everything. As if joy is temporary by default, and loving it openly will somehow make the loss hurt more when it inevitably leaves.
So instead, we minimise. We say “it’s fine” instead of “this is fucking amazing” we say, “Yeah I went alright” rather than “I fucking killed it.” We stay braced, just in case. Because somewhere deep down is the fear that if we let ourselves fully feel hope or joy — if we believe in it — then the fall will be worse. And maybe everyone who was secretly hoping we’d fail will get the satisfaction of saying see, I told you so.
Just me?
Maybe joy isn’t fragile — maybe our relationship with it is. Maybe hope doesn’t set us up for disappointment so much as it asks us to be present for what’s actually here, rather than constantly rehearsing the loss of it. And maybe the bravest thing isn’t chasing more — but letting ourselves fully feel the good that already exists, without immediately trying to protect ourselves from it.
What if joy isn’t something to be managed or watered down — but something we practice staying with, even when it scares us?
In her book Daring Greatly, Brené Brown quotes Theodore Roosevelt, speaking to those who choose to show up fully and risk failure — where the cost of potential downfall is still worth the effort, regardless of the outcome. If we see joy as something worthy of that same risk, and accept that the opinions of those who never step into the arena are largely irrelevant, then sitting on the sidelines starts to feel like the bigger loss.
Yes, the higher you climb, the further you have to fall — but sometimes the view really is worth it, if you can just hang on.
