In March 2016, I was hired to research joy. I was ecstatic. For the first few months, I read everything I could get my hands on about joy. I believed deeply that our work mattered, even as I realized early on that I would need to regularly defend it. When I reached out to scholars about joining our project, I often had to explain why joy was worth studying at all.

Eight months into the project, tragedy struck. Three of my family members died in the span of four weeks, each in devastating ways. My cousin’s husband died by suicide at 30, just a week before Christmas. My 22-year-old nephew died suddenly of an undetected heart condition. And five days later, my dad died after years of opioid addiction.

Suddenly, I felt like the skeptics I had been trying to win over. Study joy? How trivial and shallow in a hurting world, I thought. Surely there were more important things to research. In my grief, I could hardly bring myself to get out of bed each day. With the help of EMDR therapy, I managed to keep working, focusing on nurturing partnerships in our research network and overseeing the grant’s metrics and evaluation. I couldn’t bring myself to write about joy, so I set that work aside.

A year and a half later, I became a volunteer chaplain at a women’s maximum-security prison. It was strange that I said yes. I felt empty, and yet I sensed God nudging me toward this opportunity. It changed my life.

Inside that prison, in a circle of blue plastic chairs, I began to discover joy as the ultimate counteragent to despair. The women there had endured profound suffering, yet they demonstrated a remarkable capacity for joy. As we shared our stories, sang songs, prayed, supported one another, laughed, cried, and imagined hopeful futures together, joy erupted.

Since then, my research on joy has been tested again and again. I know what joy is and what it’s capable of, and why living open to it matters deeply. But it is often far easier to nurture pessimism, hopelessness, and distrust in human goodness and in the integrity of institutions. Most days I find myself more inclined to point out what is wrong than what is right. I revel in sarcasm, and I’ve mastered the art of cultivating disappointment and worry.

It is hard for me to be a joyful person—let alone a joy scholar—in an overwhelming, unjust, and divided world. And yet, as I re­flect on what I learned in that prison, I see more clearly that it’s possible for me to keep longing for and giving myself over to joy, because it is neither a superficial feeling nor a form of naïve optimism. Joy does not depend on ideal circumstances. It is not fragile. To recognize and embrace joy is not to ignore reality or to betray grief. Joy and sorrow can live intermingled in our hearts. While sorrow is not necessary for joy, the two can be companions. Lament tells the truth about what is wrong, so it can open the heart to also recognize what is good and right. Both lament and joy are forms of truth-telling—honest lament can clear the way for genuine joy.Joy is an orientation toward life, rooted in meaning, truth, goodness, beauty, love, and transcendence, even and especially in the midst of hardship. As such, joy is not optional. It is critical, not only for individual lives but also for our educational institutions, our workplaces, and whole societies.

Gratitude: Attuning to the Good

Joy is not the same as happiness, entertainment, or mere positivity. It cannot be reduced to pleasure, optimism, or comfort. Joy often arises through meaningful connection to others, to what matters most, and to something higher and beyond the self. It may mean being captivated and grounded by truth, arrested by goodness or beauty, or transfixed by what makes life, even for a few minutes, feel astoundingly worth living. Joy is illumination, a sudden glimpse of more than the eye can see. That “something more” gives life meaning and empowers us to resist hopelessness. There is no imprisoned mind, barren space, or deafening silence that joy cannot break through. Joy is a form of moral and spiritual resilience. It has grit.

When cultivated as a virtue, joy becomes a posture we take, a practice we nurture, and a lens through which we see the world. It is a gift, an action, and an orientation all at once. To cultivate joy as a virtue, we can engage in “‘gateways to joy,” practices that open us to its presence and allow it to take root within our communities.

One of these gateways is attunement to the good. The practice of looking for the good has helped my students tremendously. In one of my college courses, I pulled a student aside after class who I could tell needed some extra support. She whispered, “I’ve tried to take this class two other times and bailed the first week.” The theme of the class stirred worry in her. I made it a point to regularly check in. I encouraged her when I could. And in the classroom, I asked students weekly to do the same for one another: name strengths, and call out what they saw that was good.

Slowly, I noticed her change. Her voice grew steadier. Her shoulders lifted. Dur­ing the middle of the semester, I gathered everyone into a circle. We stood together, and I asked: “What’s one thing you’ve grown in this semester, something you can celebrate in yourself?” When her turn came, she didn’t hesitate. She named the change she saw in herself out loud, and she rejoiced. We all rejoiced with her. When we practice attuning to the good, we learn to notice what elicits joy: positive transformation, the beauty that surrounds us, and the truths that remind us who we are.

We can train our brains to notice the good that is present rather than just what is difficult, painful, or missing—a practice that can help us to resist despair in especially difficult circumstances.

In the prison group I led, I once got permission to bring in a flipchart and a box of markers. I split the women into groups, handed each one a giant sheet of paper, and asked: “Prison takes away so much. What do you still have?” The women were always full of curiosity and eagerness to learn and share. That night was no different. They turned to each other ready to dive into conversation, and words began to tumble out. They wrote and wrote, filling the pages. Fifteen minutes later, we stood around those lists in silence, mesmerized by the abundance they had created together. This exercise didn’t change the fact that they were experiencing tremendous hardship and had navigated many struggles, but it reminded them that their lives still mattered and were full of worth. Even in prison their lives held meaning, and they had some agency and things to offer one another.

A deeper form of attunement to the good is gratitude, which not only deliberately seeks out what is good but also turns our attention toward what is life-giving and sustaining, and gives thanks for it.

Practiced over and over, gratitude reshapes people. It sharpens our perception of light in ordinary things, and prepares the ground of our souls for joy to take root. That is why, in every class I teach and every program I lead, I always end the same way, with gratitude. Participants are invited to share thanks for one another, for what they’ve learned, and for the journey itself. These closing circles never fail to undo me, because gratitude, especially when practiced in community, becomes joy embodied.

Purpose and Vocation:
Making Meaningful Connections

Another gateway to joy is the experience of meaningful connection. In my public speaking class for Santa Fe Community College, I designed an assignment in which each student had to give four talks, but they had freedom in topic and genre. These could be anything from a marketing pitch to a wedding toast to a speech at a protest. I encouraged them to choose subjects and formats that connected to their sense of purpose or vocation. One student, training to be a chef, took a unique approach. He recorded his talk in his kitchen, standing beside a raw chicken. As the camera rolled, he demonstrated how to break it down properly and then described the variety of meals that could be created from just one bird. A class he had assumed had little to do with his vocation became a space where he shared something central to his joy and calling. He transformed a public speaking exercise into a celebration of meaningful work.

That moment reminded me of something I’ve witnessed again and again: joy emerges when our daily activities align with our deeper purpose. Most of us reach a point when we begin to wonder: Who am I? What am I doing here? What sense can I make of my life? What I’ve realized is that we cannot answer these questions alone. In those seasons, we need guides who help us connect the ordinary rhythms of our days with a deeper sense of why it matters that we keep rising each morning. This is why teachers, mentors, and leaders play such an important role: they help us recognize and connect the threads of meaning in our lives. When our lives feel integrated—when the tasks of daily living contribute to our organizations, our communities, our relationships, or our values—we discover a centering kind of joy.

This truth became especially vivid when I taught Life Worth Living at Yale. As part of the course, we took students on a retreat. It is just one Saturday and technically optional, yet every student always chooses to attend. During the retreat, we asked them to wrestle with the question: “How do you hope to engage the world, and why?” It was intentionally expansive. Students could speak about their future careers, but they could also reflect on how they wanted to contribute to their families and communities and the mark they hoped to make. The retreat created space for students to name and connect their deepest values to the shape of their lives. In that space of reflection and guidance, I began to see how joy emerges not simply from achieving goals, but also from discerning meaning. When people are invited to consider what is truly worth living for, even brief encounters can become sites of transformation.

I saw this same truth come alive one evening in the prison group where I was given permission to bring white paper and markers for our version of “vision boards.” Though the context could not have been more different, the underlying dynamic was strikingly similar: when people are offered a setting in which to explore purpose with honesty and hope, joy begins to surface. I invited the women to draw or write words that represented the vision they had for their lives. I asked them to consider what matters most and to describe what is truly worth living for. They wasted no time. Scattering around the room, they bent over the paper, sketching and writing with focus and energy. When the boards were finished, we hung them on the walls and invited anyone who wished to share their thoughts. One by one, they spoke with hope: about becoming counselors, reclaiming peace and self-worth, living without shame, making their families proud, helping others, and staying attuned to God.

One of the students, Amy, raised her hand and, after being invited to share, bluntly said she wanted to wipe people’s butts in a nursing home one day. The way she said it was funny, but no one laughed because she was incredibly excited and serious about it. Amy went on to lovingly explain that people had cared for her and she didn’t mind caring for others, especially those who really need help like older people in nursing homes who often are forgotten. She said she knew what it was to feel forgotten. Amy rejoiced over her vision board because it is joyful to have experiences that encourage us to become the people that we know we most deeply and truly are.

At the end of the night, after the women exited the room, I gazed at the visions hanging on the wall. The images and words they left behind and what they had shared about them testified to the same truth I had witnessed with my students: that joy can grow in the soil of meaning and connection. One woman wrote, “Not just a person from the projects who dies without changing the world, even if it is something as small as the ripple effect,” surrounding her words with hand-drawn ripples of water. Another vision board had several concrete aspirations that together demonstrated not just what sort of life would be worth living, but how she might get there too: “Recovery, God #1, trauma therapist, motivational speaker, work with inner-city children.” I stared for several minutes at another sign: “Love without anger and fear, never forget where I came from and where I was headed.” These words stayed with me long after I left the prison.

Across the contexts—community college, elite university, and correctional facility—I saw the same movement of the human spirit: the awakening that occurs when people make meaningful connections between their daily activities, convictions, and sense of purpose. Integrative or existential joy arises not only when we know what we are living for, but when we discover, often through the help of wise guides and shared reflection, that how we live also matters.

Communal Joy:
Fostering Collaboration and Belonging

Communal joy is ignited when people in a group feel known, honored, and bound together. Educational spaces often only foster competition and comparison. Yet, educators have opportunities to cultivate communal joy as well. I have noticed that when I name and celebrate the ways students support, rely on, and uplift one another that they tend to enjoy turning to one another more. Making acts of solidarity more visible teaches that success is shared, and it invites participants in an educational setting or staff in an organization to learn how to lean on each other, grow from one another’s input, and explore new ideas alongside each other. Honoring collaboration in this way reshapes how we understand what it means to show up in a learning community or in a workplace. It clears the ground for redefining participation itself, not as the performance of brilliance, but as the practice of connection.

My friend and colleague, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, helped me articulate this shift in my courses. In my syllabi, I explain that class participation doesn’t just mean having a brilliant idea. It looks like asking a question or making a comment that shows interest in what another person says; or making a comment that underscores the link between two people’s contributions or signals that another person’s ideas are interesting or useful. In this sense, participation becomes not just about sharing one’s own insight but also about amplifying the voices around us. When collaboration is honored and participation is redefined as recognition, something beautiful develops: joy that is shared in common.

I often end my programs and classes with a truth-telling circle. On the final day, each participant has the opportunity to both receive affirming words and to offer them to someone else. To facilitate this activity, I reflect on the experiences we’ve had together and prepare and print a set of words that highlight what is good and true about the group as a whole—affirmations that reflect the values, strengths, and shared experiences of the participants. During the closing circle, a chair is placed in the center. One by one, participants sit in the chair while someone stands in front of them and reads the affirmations aloud. Every participant has a turn to both read words to someone else starting with their name and have words read to them. I begin with the person next to me, and the process continues around the circle. In the most recent Life Worth Living journey I led, this was the affirmation students read to one another:

“May you live a meaningful life. May you dare to hope and recover from failure. May you respond to suffering—your own and others’—in ways that carry meaning for you. When the spaces you work in feel overwhelming, may you turn to the relationships you’ve formed here. When the winds of life blow you off course, may you draw on the truths you discovered or reclaimed. Your life is worth living. Your life matters to us. You are free to live into your gifts, free to be yourself, free to live a life worthy of your humanity.”

The room grew still when the words of affirmation were spoken. Many participants cried. Everyone was moved. The group experienced a sobering, quiet joy. This is because when someone tells the truth about who we are, honors our dignity, or encourages us to be our true self—when they really see us and speak it aloud—it changes us. It happens too rarely. Rituals, celebrations, and moments of shared affirmation spark communal joy that is infectious. It is nearly impossible to witness someone else rejoicing, celebrating, or experiencing joy—whether exuberant, heal­ing, transformative, or redemptive—without feeling more deeply connected to them or drawn into their experience. Experiences of joy point us toward what is worth doing, desiring, creating, and pursuing. In this way, joy nurtures human beings toward what is truly worthy of their relationships, time, work, and imagination.

Joy is a Virtue

Joy is a practice, a lens, and a moral and spiritual orientation that can transform lives, classrooms, organizations, and communities. We experience glimmers of joy when we learn to attune to the ever-present good in us, in our lives, in others, and in the world. Joy also emerges when our daily activities as well as how we work and how we move through life aligns with our deepest values and sense of purpose. Joy flourishes when we celebrate collaboration and take part in communal rituals of recognition and care.

Joy is resilient, grounded in meaning, and capable of piercing despair even in the most difficult circumstances. From my early research at Yale to the women’s prison where I first witnessed joy’s radical power, to classrooms and programs I continue to lead, I have seen the same truth again and again: joy flourishes when we step through its gateways that help us recognize and feel connected to meaning, truth, beauty, goodness, others, or God. It especially thrives when we truly see one another and build communities where human dignity is honored.

We need joy guides—teachers, mentors, and leaders—who help us to engage in gateways to joy. Joy guides encourage practices that help us recognize the good and focus on and give thanks for what we have rather than what’s missing; assist us with integration, living with purpose, and making meaningful connections; and create opportunities for communal joy.

Joy is both a personal and communal gift. We cannot make ourselves feel joy, but we can live expectantly—awake and alive to its possibility—knowing that joy can always find us, even when our hearts are broken. Joy can live within us even when disappointment, worry, or pessimism weigh heavy. And in a world that so often feels fractured and overwhelming, surrendering to joy when it comes is not only an act of resistance, it is an act of sustenance. It helps us endure. It roots us in belonging. It keeps hope alive.