Joy Is Our Resistance
A call to remember joy in the shadow of authoritarianism, war, and unrest
The World on Fire
They are killing each other again. In the alleys. In the avenues. In the atriums of power. The scream and the silence have begun to blend. We scroll through slaughter. We yawn through tragedy. We bleed by proxy. And still—still—something in us resists. Something flickers in the ribcage. Not denial. Not numbness. But joy.
What a strange and scandalous thing.
Joy is not the enemy of grief. It is what survives it. Joy is not apathy. It is apostasy from despair. Joy is the defiant decision to feel—anyway. To see—anyway. To love—anyway.
The Wisdom of the Ancients
The ancients understood this. They wrapped it in sand and scroll, in parable and paradox. Cicero called joy the highest good of a life well-lived. Seneca spoke of it as a flame inside the fortress. Epicurus found it in bread and friendship and freedom from fear. Plato knew it as the soul's echo when it hears the good. The Stoics knew: Joy is what remains when all else is taken. Joy is what remains. Joy is what remains.
This is not the joy of parties and prizes. Not the joy of profit. Not the joy of distraction or dopamine. But the joy that comes when a man looks the abyss in the eye and still makes his bed. When a woman walks through ruins and still plants a seed. When a child draws breath in a bombed-out room and still sings.
This is joy as resistance.
Joy in the Face of Power
In Los Angeles, where the tear gas hangs like fog, where federal troops flex their presence, where immigration becomes justification for crackdowns, we must remember our joy. Not to forget the wounded. Not to overlook the dead. But to honor them with the kind of living that tyrants cannot touch.
And across the globe—where missiles fall on apartment blocks, where families sleep underground, where children ask what country they belong to—we hold fast to joy. Because when everything else is taken, it is joy that makes us human. To speak of joy today is not to run from pain. It is to cradle pain with care, to acknowledge its presence—then gently set it aside and say, "You may stay, but you do not command me."
The Practice of Joy
What is joy in this brutal world? It is the unbroken vow to witness beauty. It is the ritual of noticing— The soft breath of bread rising, The defiant bloom in cracked concrete, The human hand offered, unasked, The face lit not by the phone but by the fire.
To notice. That is our rebellion. That is our remembrance. That is our resurrection.
Standing Without Surrender
Let us not confuse stillness for surrender. Let us not mistake calm for complicity. Let us not believe that to grieve loudly is the only way to be brave. Some of us resist by roaring. Some of us resist by remaining. Some of us resist by rejoicing.
We will not hand over our hearts to tyrants. We will not hand over our minds to marketers. We will not hand over our joy to the jaws of fear.
Not because it is easy. But because it is ours.
Joy is not the end of the fight. Joy is the fight, clothed in light. And so we stand. Still. Easy. Singing. And in that song, we survive.
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