May Joy Be Your Stubborn Companion

I keep bumping into the concept of joy. My podcast feeds. A new book by a favorite author. 

They aren’t talking about the kind of joy you manufacture. Not the "good vibes only" kind that gets embroidered on throw pillows and feels like a gentle pressure to smile through gritted teeth. They are talking about the other kind — the kind that taps you on the shoulder when you weren't expecting company. The kind that interrupts your anxiety spiral or your mental to-do list with something small and completely unasked for.

The kind that is, as author and podcaster Kate Bowler put it in a blessing at the end of one of her episodes, stubborn.

That word stuck with me even after she read the end credits and the last ad played. Stubborn. Not just present, but stubborn. Joy that shows up whether you invited it or not. Joy that doesn't wait for the right circumstances or the right mood. Joy that finds you anyway.

Meet the Frends

It started quietly, the way the best rituals do.

Somewhere along the way, I began noticing the unexpected wild creatures that crossed my path — a turtle making its slow, determined way across the walking trail, a toad hopping across the driveway in the rain — and I started taking a quick picture of them. Then texting the photos to my husband. And at some point, without either of us really deciding it, these creatures got a name: frends. Intentionally misspelled. Designated as bonus beings in my day, little gifts from the universe that I didn't earn and didn't plan for.

Now we both do it. He sends me the grasshopper that lands on his arm while he's mowing. The fox he spots at the edge of the yard. I send him the cautious turtle, the hoppy little toad.

The misspelling matters. "Friend" would be too tidy. "Frend" has a little laugh in it — tender and silly at the same time, which is exactly the right register for a creature who doesn't know or care that you're in the middle of worrying about something.

The World Smiling at You

Here's what I've come to understand about frends and why they bring a small bit of joy into my day: it's entirely about the unexpectedness.

If I went to a zoo, I'd see turtles. I'd appreciate them. But it wouldn't be the same. The magic is in the interruption — the ordinary world suddenly going here, look at this. It's the universe smiling at you, no matter what's on your mind or how you happen to be feeling that day.

I can't point to a specific hard day when a frend showed up and saved me. But I can tell you that when I'm letting an anxiety loop take hold, or ruminating over a decision, or just stuck in my own head — noticing a frend is a quick breath of fresh air. I may return to that train of thought (I usually do). But for a moment, I'm reminded that there is beauty despite everything else.

The frend doesn't fix anything. It just cracks the window open a little.

Joy Is Not the Same as Happiness

Joy is not just a different level of happy.

Kate Bowler made this distinction gently and clearly during a recent author talk: joy can live alongside grief and fear. Happiness requires the right circumstances. Joy is more stubborn than that. It doesn't need conditions. It just needs a toad in the rain, or a small handwritten note dropped in the mail, or a cloud formation that looks unmistakably like a dragon if you're willing to tilt your head.

Those are mine, by the way. The frends, yes, but also the clouds. The rainbows that stop me mid-errand. The lightning displays I probably watch a little too long from the porch. And the gift-giving — not grand gestures, but finding a small trinket at a shop because it's so obviously that person, or sitting down to write a note to someone just to tell them what makes them irreplaceable to me. These things make my strange little heart feel warm, to borrow a phrase from Jenny Lawson’s book, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay.

“You don't know what joy looks like until you've tried enough things to know what makes your strange little heart feel warm.”

The specificity of that — your strange little heart — is what I love most. Because joy isn't universal. It's not the same list for everyone. Yours might be a particular song, or the first sip of coffee, or the smell of rain, or the way light comes through a certain window in the afternoon. The point is knowing what it is for you. Paying enough attention to notice it when it arrives.

May It Find You Anyway

My hope for you — whatever you're carrying right now, whatever loop you're stuck in — is that something stubborn finds you today.

Maybe it'll be an actual toad. Maybe it'll be something else entirely. But I hope joy shows up uninvited, the way it does, and cracks the window open just enough.

And if you have someone to text a photo to, even better.