Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past . . . —Nikolai Gogol in Dead Souls (1842)

The first time I really thought about the notion of joy was after reading Zadie Smith’s 2013 essay, “Joy” in the New York Review of Books. Smith described joy as something distinct from pleasure. Joy was a “human madness” and “strange mixture of terror, pain and delight.” I was familiar with Daniel Gilbert’s science of happiness. And I had considered myself an expert of whimsy, having been deeply influenced by a Polish roommate in graduate school who insisted we celebrate every victory, however small, with champagne, and buy fresh flowers for every disappointment or just because. Tiny pleasures make the grind of daily life more than tolerable.

The logic and roots of happiness, whimsy, even pleasure seemed straightforward. There were strategies to cultivate them, to practice, and to master them. Later, inspired by authors like Laurie Santos or Arthur Brooks, I considered myself quite good at doing happiness. Enacting gratitude, attentiveness, and purpose were all doable. And later, devouring the work of Ross Gay during the Covid-19 pandemic, I became a dedicated practitioner of the art of delight. I require students every year to read his Book of Delights, seeing it as a how to guide to a life well lived.

Joy still remained more elusive, harder to understand. But joy wasn’t—as I misunderstood Gogol implied—something that broke through or interrupted the sorrow. It was fully a part of that very sorrow. I also misread, or perhaps misapplied, Gay. His work in Book of Delights, Book of (More Delights) and Inciting Joy are fundamentally about what he calls ‘adult joy,’ or about where my suffering meets your suffering. It is in life’s hardest moments, in pursuit of deep commitments, in the vulnerable recognition of our shared and full humanity that we find joy. It is the moment in which we truly see and are seen. Joy is that paradoxical, transcendent experience when I interview survivors of human trafficking or displaced refugees and hear both of their horror and of their hope. It is also when we experience collective effervescence and know we are part of something far bigger than ourselves—at a concert, sporting event, religious service, or a rally. It is why the funeral following my father’s heartbreakingly sudden death felt so oddly joyful. Joy is not done alone but exists in messy relationships and in the complicated, hard fought solidarity of community. It thrives on sorrow and struggle. Because it requires relationships, joy requires, as Zadie Smith would say, risk. To seek joy is to court possible suffering. Joy requires courage, creativity, and compassion. Joy demands justice. Joy is knowing you are where you were meant to be, however hard. As such, joy is at the center of all human flourishing and what it means to pursue the common good.

In this seventh issue of Virtues & Vocations: Higher Education for Human Flourishing, ten different authors bring very different life experiences and scholarly backgrounds to reflections on what joy means to them and their work. The issue introduces us to the science of joy, speculations about joy, and experiences of joy. The essays are themselves sad, profound, lyrical, and joyful. This issue also features a wonderfully rich and at times enigmatic interview with author Alain de Botton and a poem by Ross Gay.

To my naïve surprise, this was one of our most challenging topics for many of our authors. Indeed, some folks refused to even consider writing about joy, with one noting “I don’t do joy.” I wonder if this struggle with joy is precisely because, as Smith reminds us, “there is actually very little pleasure in it.” Happiness and whimsy are far more seductive, even when they seem compulsory. That joy is hard is then what makes these ten essays so provocatively rich and engaging.

Welcome.