The year 2020 hasn’t been one to remember – in fact, for a lot of people it has been an outright nightmare. The pandemic, along with political turmoil and social unrest, has brought anxiety, heartbreak, righteous anger and discord to many.
Amid such suffering, people need some joy.
As a scholar who has investigated the role of joy in day-to-day life, I believe that joy is an incredibly powerful companion during suffering.
Speaking at funerals, teaching joy
This is more than academic work for me. In late 2016, less than a year after I was hired to be on a research team at Yale University, three of my family members unexpectedly died within four weeks: my cousin’s husband Dustin at 30 by suicide, my sister’s son Mason at 22 of sudden cardiac arrest, and my dad, David, at 70 after years of opioid use.