Joy Is Not a Luxury

A midwestern-eldest-daughter defeats the odds and begins to grasp there may be more to life than just working really, really hard.

Background painting—Dancers Practicing at the Barre by Edgar Degas

“What happens if you end up loving it?” my husband asks, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

I roll my eyes and dig a pair of leggings out of the back of my closet, hiking them over my thighs and snapping the waistband in place over my belly button.

“I am not going to love it,” I laugh. Even the thought of it feels absurd. “Can you really see me doing barre classes regularly? Ha! I’m going one time because I told my friend I would. I don’t even like group fitness!”

On my way out the door, he offers the same words I say to my three-year-old every evening at the dinner table:

“How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never even tried it?”

When I arrive at the studio, I pick the spot in the far back corner by the door and try to look like I know what I’m doing.

A quick scan around the room reveals I’m not the only one with a crop top from Amazon and a stretched-out belly button—what a relief.

Before I realize what I’ve gotten myself into, upbeat music begins pulsing through the studio. Three minutes later, I’m doing banded squat pulses to the beat, sweat dripping down my back and quads shaking wildly.

But when I look in the mirror to check my form, I realize I’m smiling.

For probably the first time in my life, I’m not just moving my body out of some vague sense of duty and obligation.

I’m not just working hard for the sake of working hard. I’m really loving it.

So I go home and do something I’ve never done.

I sign up to be part of the studio.

For years, I exercised by myself.

I exercised by myself not only because it was the most frugal option, but because I knew I could always count on myself to work—hard.

I would put in my earbuds and crank up the most dramatic, rage-y bops I could find before pounding out the pavement, or hopping on the elliptical at the gym, or jumping into the pool to swim laps.

Like most things in my life, I believed moving my body had to happen mostly through grit, willpower, and sheer determination.

I believed exercise had to be a grind because I believed life had to be a grind.

As if getting things done was some inevitable, never-ending treadmill.

As if delight was secondary—a bonus if I finished all my work.

As if joy was some luxury I could not afford.

My husband and I grew up understanding that most of adult life is hard work, and while there are many reasons for this, I like to believe it’s mostly due to our proper Midwest upbringing.

Behold, the four essential midwestern virtues:

1. The further out of the city you drive, the more unhinged the billboards become. You can be in the Twin Cities one minute, reading things like, Call Bonfe for your plumbing needs! and before you know it, you’re five miles out of the city, flanked by cornfields on either side, reading things like HELL IS FOR REAL—ARE YOU READY TO MEET YOUR MAKER? and all you wanted was to take the kids to the apple orchard. Talk about whiplash.

2. It’s hot dish, not casserole, and gray duck, not goose. I said what I said.

3. There is at least one dad on every block who compulsively sweeps his driveway and/or meticulously maintains his lawn until it looks like an actual golf course. (My dad was this dad, and his lawn was—and still is—iconic.)

4. You work. Hard. The harder, the better. If someone tells you you’re a hard worker, you have received the highest compliment and can die happy (but not before you weed the garden, train for your upcoming half marathon, fold six loads of laundry, make a hot dish for your neighbor, and plan the Fourth of July barbecue).

Couple these midwestern principles with the fact that my husband is the eldest brother in his family, and I’m the eldest daughter in mine, and you may begin to understand why we have the propensity to run ourselves into the ground and then wonder how we got there.

Needless to say, communicating the value of hard work to our children will always come naturally to us.

What won’t come as naturally?

Showing them what it means to cultivate joy.

My six-year-old looked up from her coloring the other day and asked, “Mama, is it so fun to be a grown-up?”

I blinked at her like she was speaking a foreign language.

Her eyes were wide and eager, and still, I felt the overwhelming urge to temper her tender naïveté with a cold, hard dose of reality. A parade of not-so-fun adult obligations marched through my mind—bills, mortgage payments, therapy, chores, anxiety, relationship challenges—but I paused for a beat and pressed my lips together.

Surely, she will understand that hard work is an important part of adult life.

But will she know that joy is, too?

In twenty years, will she know how to leave things undone or imperfect for the sake of caring for her own spirit?

Will she remember how to play?

Will she know what it is to live a simple life without the cold hand of fear always pressing at the back of her neck?

I think about all the times in the last year I’ve paused and listened to my body—all the times I’ve discovered choices and freedoms that had previously seemed invisible.

I put the kids in front of a movie and lie down in my bed when I need rest. I light the fancy candles, instead of saving them for a special occasion. I take time to make myself a real lunch that will nourish my body, even if the kids are crying at my heels for theirs. When we’re tired and cranky, we stay home and bake banana bread. Sometimes I take a walk at 5:00 PM while my husband makes scrambled eggs and toaster waffles for dinner. And there are many, many nights when we turn up Kidzbop and dance out our big feelings.

None of these things are flashy, but together, they add up to something like joy, something like freedom. Something like a breadcrumb trail of grace I’m learning how to follow.

“You know what?” I tell her. “Being a grown-up is pretty fun.”

I smile when I say the words.

I am really beginning to believe them.

K.J. Ramsey

writes that play is the polar opposite of trauma, and there is something striking in those words—the fact that making room for this kind of letting go is the inverse of fear and shame.

So often, our pain is the loudest voice in the room. If we’ve been shoving it down for years, it has to be loud so we can finally listen.

But once it’s been heard and tended to—once it’s been large and loud and had its turn to fill up the room—it’s okay to let our joy become the loudest voice, again. It’s okay to let our delight and sense of play fill up the room instead of keeping them small.

I’ve lost so much energy and time trying to protect myself from pain by leashing my joy. I thought if I kept it in check, I could lessen whatever disappointment awaited. I kept waiting for other people to give me permission to let it run free, when maybe the person I really needed permission from was myself—my own blistered, ragged, achievement-addicted self.

This is my permission slip to myself:

You are allowed to choose a life that leaves room for joy and rest and peace. It may cost you—money or time or relationships or status—but in return, you protect your own soul.

In return, you help the people you love find a different path forward, away from the ever-increasing grind, the compulsion to do more and more, the pressure to have something tangible to show for their life.

In return, you get to show up for your life.

You get to really live.

Mary Oliver really gets it.

One evening, on my way out the door for barre, my daughters wrap their arms around my knees and whine, asking me why I have to go.

In this moment, I could tell them many things.

I could tell them that moving my body is important, that it makes me a better mom, a better wife, that it helps me regulate my emotions and calm my body, that it’s important for me to get out and do things just for me.

I could tell them any and all of these reasons, and I have—many times—but I don’t say them now.

I want them to understand that sometimes, delight for delight’s sake is a good enough reason.

So I tell them.

“I’m going to barre because it brings me joy,” I say, resisting the urge to add more.

Then I shut the door, smile and blow kisses to my kids through the front window, and exhale.

I can’t be totally sure, but I think I feel a little bit lighter.

I used to believe that admitting something was purely for my own happiness or delight would invite the hand of God to smite me from Heaven.

I like to call that god the Very Serious Scandinavian Ancestor God, aptly named after the photographs hanging in my grandparents’ guest room of our family ancestors. (Look, I love and respect our family heritage but as someone who used to sleep over in that room, I swear the ghosts of my ancestors would stare down at me from their frames on the wall and watch me while I slept).

My actual, real life, Very Serious Scandinavian Ancestors. (May they rest in peace).

Very Serious Scandinavian Ancestor God promised suffering and pain and hardship. He only nodded in approval when I was working towards some vague Greater Good.

And you know what else? Very Serious Scandinavian Ancestor God sucked my soul dry and left me exhausted.

Luckily, I don’t believe in him anymore.

I believe in a God who smiles and maybe even says things like this:

Have fun playing and delighting and being joyful. This is part of what it is to be alive. I already did the hard work, so you can stop self-optimizing.

You can lean into delight without making it a means to an end.

You can just be.

I am saying things at the table with my first-grader this year that I did not say as often last year.

Things like, “What does your body need?” and “Do you feel like you need to be finished with this for the day?” and “It’s okay to take as many breaks as you need.”

I am allowing my child to be a pretend puppy while she does her math, even though it drives me bonkers.

I am purchasing gel pens. I am using my silly sing-song voice.

I am doing less pushing and more playing. Less insisting and more inviting. Less lecturing and more listening.

Little by little, I am learning that all of us—me, my kids, my husband—actually feel closer to each other and closer to our Creator when we make room for connection and joy, delight and playfulness, rest and peace.

I think that’s all I really want—a life where joy and delight are not seen as a luxury, but a gift that’s always available.

One that’s ours for the taking.