As society crumbles around us, people continue to create. As americans, we have been living in uncertainty for years, and one of the only consistent news headlines is the continuous, slow collapse of our society. But if you peer into the window of the average american, or catch them on any Sunday afternoon, you will find them falling in love, dancing, creating, and raising families in spite of it all. While everyone is feeling the exhaustion and the pain of our countries slip into facism, we continue to dream, plan, and build our lives. The question that will determine the outcome of our society is this: do we practice joy as escapism, or do we practice joy as resilience?

Too often, joy and pleasure are misused as escapism. It is easy to assume that we must choose between despair or joy: either succumbing to pain of our oppression and the oppression around us, or flee reality by numbing ourselves with a sort of artificial joy. This is an addiction cycle, where we waver between running away from pain only to hide in a temporary pleasure, and thus becoming increasingly complicit in the violence taking place in our world. Over time, our ability to endure and ignore horrors becomes stronger, and the pleasure that will temporarily satisfy us must become more intense.

Never has there been a more potent example of this joy as escapism as with the livestreamed gen o cide we are witnessing today. Witnessing children being starved to death on instagram reels is horrifying and psychologically damaging to the viewer. Overwhelmed and feeling powerless, many viewers choose to swipe away from these images as quickly as possible, as if playing a peek a boo game of object permanence with their phones. Slowly, our inability to face the truth of our world causes us to retreat into smaller and smaller lives, relinquished to a life of denial, weakness, and culpability. This escapism towards joy is how most americans live.

While joy is often misused, it cannot be dismissed. Joy and pleasure are vital to surviving the hardest of times! They keeps us in a practice of not just seeing danger, but seeing opportunity and good things that a person in despair would otherwise miss. Joy keeps us buoyant and energized, ready to face our pain. It is good for our immune systems and it helps us be kind to one another. The more we practice joy, the more motivated we feel, the more life becomes worth the labor, and pain is worth enduring. This is joy as resilience.

Joy as resilience is the flashlight we bring into a cave of despair. Rather than helping us to run away from what terrifies us, this joy helps us to confront our fears honestly and courageously. This joy gives us power to overcome almost anything, no longer hiding in the escape of positivity, but standing boldly in the multifaceted complexity of our world, and with the courage to participate.

How do we know the difference between joy as escapism and joy as resilience? This question is slippery, and it presents a problem to the cop within our own heads, which aims to police ourselves and those around us. It is impossible to take a snapshot of a moment at categorize it as escapism or resilience. Two people hugging, a person scrolling on their phone, a group laughing on a dance floor, or someone scarfing down a giant piece of chocolate cake, all could be escapism or resilience, depending on context. There is no way to police joy, and strain out the “good” vs “evil” forms of joy. Furthermore, there is no true “joy purity” that one can achieve, because even moments of escapism can serve on a path towards resilience. Sometimes, a temporary escape can build resilience, too.

A more productive approach might be to look at the outcome of the joy, asking: Does this joy help me build towards the beautiful world I hope to create? Is this joy giving me the power and courage I need to take action in the face of hardship? If you have joy as resilience, the proof will be in your ability to step away from the joy and into the darkness, to do meaningful work, and create change from a place of love.

Now more than ever, we humans must work together to foster joy as resilience, to honor it, and tend to it as part of the practice of change making. We cannot achieve the dream of collective well being, community care, love, and freedom, without this vital and life giving medicine: joy as resilience.