Joyful (Ingrid Fetell Lee)
OVERVIEW
Fun fact about me, I am full of joy. Positively brimming with the stuff (perhaps a bit of an oddity for someone who has a death blog?). I picked up Ingrid Fetell Lee’s “Joyful: The Surprising Power Of Ordinary Things To Create Extraordinary Happiness” not for the joy, perse, but because she examines the aesthetics of joy. What are the sensory elements of harmony? Is freedom tangible? What are the visual features of play and surprise and celebration? And how do all these components assemble to create a joyful experience?
This year I’m interested in self-transcendence and mystery, so the chapters on transcendence and magic are what drew me in, but the overall concept – of joy as a tangible, renewable external resource – is exhilarating.
Fetell Lee identified 10 aesthetics of joy, sensory properties that elicit feelings of delight and flourishing:
1. Energy: vibrant colour and light
2. Abundance: lushness, multiplicity, and variety
3. Freedom: nature, wilderness, and open space
4. Harmony: balance, symmetry, and flow
5. Play: circles, spheres, and bubbly forms
6. Surprise: contrast and whimsy
7. Transcendence: elevation and lightness
8. Magic: invisible forces and illusions
9. Celebration: synchrony, sparkle, and bursting shapes
10. Renewal: blossoming, expansion, and curves
“Joyful” covers the evolutionary basis for why we love sprinkles and rainbows, how lively colours can get people to pay their taxes, why we’re drawn to sparkles, balloons, and googly eyes, and ultimately how joy can be cultivated from the outside – counter to the mainstream belief that joy is an inside-out emotion. According to Fetell Lee, joy evolved for the purpose of steering us toward conditions that would help us flourish. Joy is not excess icing on the cake of life, it’s the difference between surviving and thriving.
Let’s turn now to the aesthetics of transcendence and mystery (click here for why I’m interested in these themes). Self-transcendence is often cited as a way to achieve “quiet ego,” and mystery is a feature of wonder, that enchantment with the universe that feels too big to hold. Both fulfill a critical role: making us feel like we’re part of something bigger, something more. And it’s this feature, the feeling of belonging to something bigger than yourself, that attenuates death anxiety. Of course, “feeling part of a whole” can be achieved in lots of other ways (devoting yourself to a worthy cause, belonging to a community), but here I’m interested with the tangible, sensory, somatic ways a secular person might elicit these feelings.
Transcendence
Transcendent experiences are vital to well-being. Toward the end of his life, Abraham Maslow even mulled over adding a level above self-actualization, a level for self-transcendence, which he felt was characterized by “peak experiences.” On peak experiences, he described those “feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placing in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened.” Jonathan Haidt and Dacher Keltner parallel transcendence with awe, the emotional response to an experience of vastness or something so great it expands beyond our usual frame of reference. The feeling is intense – it overwhelms our senses. Transcendence is wholesale immersion.
Fetell Lee focuses on how we can trigger these experiences from our environment. One component is elevation. Consider where many people report feeling overwhelming awe: looking up at a starry sky, marveling at a sequoia or redwood grove, admiring the immensity of a cathedral or a towering mountain. Elevation has always been associated with transcendence. We even have a natural affinity for things that float and fly. We are on “cloud nine” or in “high spirits”… things are “looking up.” According to Fetell Lee, research suggests the association of elevation with positive emotion or optimism is automatic and unconscious. Even the word elation, an intense feeling of joy, comes from the Latin elatus, which means “raised up” or “elevated.”
“Joyful” doesn’t elaborate in this direction, but I think the companion of elevation in the context of transcendence is immensity. It might seem obvious, but in order to feel “part of something bigger than ourselves,” the subsequent feeling of smallness seems an intuitive feature. Keltner calls the phenomenon of “small self” a state accompanied by euphoric feeling or resonance, and a sense of oneness with the world and others. We become less preoccupied with trivialities, and more imbued with an all-pervasive sense of peace and well-being. As Fetell Lee says, “we feel the contrast between our own scale and the immensity up above,” but I think this applies to all types of immensity. Looking out across the Grand Canyon, or the ocean, or any sweeping vista can certainly inspire these feelings too. Extending the concept of vastness to Haidt and Keltner’s description of something beyond our normal frame of reference, an engrossing symphonic production, an immersive art exhibit, or a moving choral arrangement would also qualify. Anytime we feel engulfed or engrossed in the enormity of a sensory experience can elicit feelings of self-transcendence. A somatic supersaturation is what we’re after.
Magic
Magic feels so much less amenable to secularization, but I want to capture my thoughts here if for nothing else than posterity. I agree with Fetell Lee that part of the charm of childhood were the fairytales and fantasies, the permission to believe in magic. There were goblins, and unicorns, and mermaids, and fairies, and folklore; the world felt infinitely more interesting because anything was possible.
Fetell Lee says situations rich in ambiguity spur magical thinking, which explains why children are eager to believe (after all, everything is ambiguous and new when you’re young). Is there a way to recreate magic in adulthood, a “bright, benevolent, mature aesthetic of magic” for skeptics? Unfortunately, this chapter was the hardest to tease tangible advice from. The closest we get is that magic hides in those circumstances or situations where the gap between cognitive understanding and sensory reality is wide. We understand exactly how bioluminescence and the aurora borealis work, but they still feel magical. Heat lightening and haloclines seem otherworldly. Fireflies or a forest draped in freshly fallen snow feel enchanting. Although it’s hard to articulate the aesthetic of magic, there still seems to be opportunities where we can be enchanted, enthralled, or mesmerized by the world. Fetell Lee advises us to “court enchantment by bringing ourselves closer to the mysteries that surround us,” and maybe that’s the best path to mature mystery – moments that can conjure enchantment (without breaking the fundamental laws of physics); and those moments tend to be ones where natural phenomena still feel deeply inexplicable.
Something I think is curious is that many enchanting phenomena – lightening, full moons, fireflies in a foggy grove, an aurora borealis or a bioluminescent beach – all feature glowing at night. Although Fetell Lee mentions this in her chapter on Celebration, I think it’s fitting her pointing out that until the early 19th century it was incredibly rare to see the world illuminated after dark. Manmade fire, yes, but natural light at night was special. Atmospheric electricity and full moonlight happened occasionally, and something like bioluminescence would have happened only rarely and seemed especially supernatural. Maybe one way to hack a sense of sorcery is by appealing to our ancestral delight for light in the darkness.
Finally, Fetell Lee points out that we can engage our sense of magic by taking time to appreciate coincidences that seemed charmed or uncanny. A swirl of autumn leaves caught in an updraft, a deer that crosses your path while hiking, or any sort of chance encounter that feels fated. Nothing supernatural needs to be occurring, but these inspire a sense of interconnectedness that feels magical.
(And hey, if all else fails, there’s always Disneyworld)
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Back to the wholesale delight, here are ways to cultivate more joy:
· Bring energy into your life with vibrant colours: fresh cut flowers, a bowl of ripe fruit, brightly coloured scarves/socks/hats, or painting an accent wall in a vivid hue
· Appeal to your love of abundance with polka dots, penny tiles, confetti, balloons, and sprinkles
· Invite freedom in by going for a swim, dancing in the rain, camping with friends, or even simply driving with the windows down
· Find place for harmony by seeking out visual symmetry and by arranging household items according to size or colour (check out Things Organized Neatly for more ideas)
· Make space for play with bubbles, go-karting, sports, frisbee, and water balloon/snowball fights; I like the idea of sticking googly eyes on everything too
· Create surprise with contrast and whimsy – invite a friend to do something fun (but don’t tell them what), hide a balloon somewhere, or notice when your favourite song comes on the radio
· Seek transcendence in nature by finding great big things to admire (tall trees, the night sky, a magnificent landscape)
· Inspire magic by draping lights across your outdoor patio, or finding an inside space for candlelight; consider where the fantasy of childhood comes most alive in your life
· Celebrate with sparklers, fireworks, parades, parties, and other occasions for collective joy
· Reconnect with renewal by engaging in seasonal rituals like pumpkin carving or gardening; spend time appreciating a sunrise or sunset
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? No.
If you had to describe the book in one sentence? Joy isn’t just something you find, it’s also something you make.
Who should read this book? Folks who want more joy!