How to Create Joy
3 min read
If we want to be joyful, we should follow young children's lead who see it anywhere. I was most recently reminded of this while interacting with a friend's three-year-old niece. We were in the car and playing a game of naming where different things are, like "Where is the cow?" "On the farm!" At one point, we asked her where joy is. She threw her hands in the air with glee and said, "Anywhere.” At a tender age, she understood that joy can be found anywhere and seemed to have figured out the solution to our sometimes jaded, structured, and mundane lives.
Her answer had me thinking about what makes us joyful and, ultimately, the role of play in experiencing it. I thought about my childhood and the cackling, giggling, and uninhibited screams of happiness when I was out and about playing. Whether it was the afternoons spent playing 'balancing ball' with my cousins and other neighborhood children while the adults conversed over their wood cooking fire in Sierra Leone or moving around the furniture in my grandmother's living room to make space for a stage where my cousins, siblings, and I would perform elaborate routines with costume changes and makeshift playbooks to the audience of our proud parents—play was always front and center in our home. However, like many people, I stopped playing somewhere between childhood and adulthood and ultimately let go of my ability to see joy around me. My friend's niece's answer brought me back to a simpler time when life was about having fun and enjoying myself. At that moment, I relearned that to reclaim joy was to play.
Children often view every environment as an opportunity to play and can experience pure delight in any situation. What if we began filtering our days for opportunities to experience joy? Playing with our romantic partners, friends, co-workers, pets, and children is a delightful way to fuel our imagination, creativity, problem-solving abilities, and emotional well-being. It's a time to forget about work and commitments and to socialize in an unstructured, creative way.
Play can add joy to life, relieve stress, supercharge learning, and connect us to others and the world around us. It can also help you retain a positive, optimistic outlook through difficult situations, disappointments, and loss. As my baba always says, "play doesn't spoil seriousness." With a playful attitude, joy is not rare and fleeting but something we can tap into at any time.
Here are five ways to create opportunities to play and reclaim your joy:
Host a game night with friends or family. You can't go wrong with a game of acting out charades.
Go for a bike ride without a destination.
Surround yourself with playful people, especially young children. Being around kids helps you experience the joy of play from their perspective. They'll help loosen you up and are more likely to support your efforts to play and have fun.
Joke with strangers at a bus stop or in a checkout line. It'll make the time pass quicker, and you may even spark up new friendships.
Invest in art supplies, puzzles, or science kits and create something new.
Even in the most challenging times, taking time away from our troubles to play or laugh can make us feel better. There doesn't need to be any point to the activity beyond having fun and enjoying ourselves. These small moments add up and can bring peace, balance, and joy to our everyday lives and enhance our overall well-being.
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