Norovirus is better than fascism

aka some thoughts on the power of joy

I’ve been thinking about joy a lot lately. (Remember way back what seems like 40 years ago what a big deal it was that Kamala Harris could be joyful and joy was still a thing?) The very notion of joy feels strange and impossible in a time of overwhelming despair over the vicious hatred and staggering greed determining not just our current existence, but the future of the human race. It’s even more odd that I am thinking about joy because I also just recovered from Norovirus, and I didn’t even go on a cruise (honoring my lifelong policy).

What I learned from being curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor bathed in sweat is that joy is inherently human and we can’t let it be extinguished. Since the moment when the pain and unpleasantness finally stopped, I feel great. Many of us have experienced this – when something feels terrible and it stops, you feel the flip side, a relief that becomes something like joy, and maybe even briefly euphoric. It’s temporary, of course, but name something that isn’t.

I am also sure that joy isn’t possible without sorrow. Not surprisingly, Khalil Gibran wrote it better than I ever could: “Joy and sorrow are inseparable, together they came and where one sits alone with you at the board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

I’ve experienced this so often in my life, with my own sorrow or witnessing the sorrow of others. Especially people in dire circumstances. Once, during a break in a writing workshop I was leading for formerly incarcerated women, the participants started sharing stories about how sick they got the first time they ate out of the garbage. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group laugh and bond that much. Beyond laughing, what I think brought joy was being seen and understood. I also learned that one gets less sick as they build up resistance. (Perhaps our resistance–but not our tolerance–to the garbage we are being force-fed will continue to gain strength?)

As an atheist, the most Jewish thing about me (other than you know, my face and name) is that I refuse to ever lose my sense of humor about anything. In my weird imagination, the funniest thing ever said was uttered by one of my ancestors in Auschwitz (sadly, we will never know what it was). Maybe I am projecting, because if I think of something I consider funny, I feel an obligation to say it, circumstances be damned. It’s my form of joy. (The below crappy video is a glimpse at the kinda thing that really brings me joy.)

After my paternal Grandmother died in hospice at our home in the afternoon, that night my sister and I went bowling. It was our plan before we knew she’d die that day, and in our daze and need for distraction, we decided to just go. We decided bowling could replace funerals, and the ensuing ridiculous ideas that flowed made for a great time in the midst of a terrible time.

A couple of days later at the actual funeral, all I’d held back while being part of caretaking for my Grandmother, and maybe even all I’d held back my then entire 23 years on the planet, came pouring out in the form of tears, wails, and so much snot. I couldn’t stop. I imagined others who were trying to mourn were annoyed by me. I know I would have been. Relatives passed me back and forth and I left a trail of mucus on cousins and aunts and whoever that one lady was. It was a life changing moment in my life (and definitely for that one lady), to mourn that powerfully (and disgustingly).

It took a few years for me to recover and make sense of what happened, and of course I have gone through loss many times since then, but what I learned was that grief is deeply intertwined with love. It may be an incredibly obvious point. We don’t tend to grieve something or someone unless we feel some form of care or connection to it. The stronger the love, the more powerful the grief. There’s something bittersweet in feeling loss when enough time passes so that the feeling of love aka joy is palpable alongside the sorrow.

So I guess what I really mean is that we don’t know exactly what is coming. In right-wing parlance, Elon Musk has cucked his much-less-rich little Orange playtoy, who gets off sitting in the corner harvesting his tiny mushroom while watching the rest of us get fucked. All while projecting his endless black hole of self-hatred onto the rest of us, getting his cut as the billionaires steal everything, and waving around his perma stay out of jail card.

We do know however, there will be no shortage of sorrow and suffering. As unsuccessful and incompetent as these people are, they are equally insecure and hateful, and will do a lot of damage. That being said, AOC reminds us all that there are a lot more of us than there are of them, and we can’t forget that either. She says we will win, and who knows what will happen, but the fight is necessary, worthwhile and of course, the only thing to do. Part of the fight must involve joy.

I think one of the great motivators behind the animosity, greed, and repulsive self-aggrandizing of these terrible, power-mad people is an astounding and pitiful inability to feel real joy. Elon Musk pretending to look happy is one of the most inauthentic things I have ever seen. His rapist puppet is the most miserable person ever. They both cheat at games and then brag! What secure and happy person over the age of 6 does that? The things they celebrate–exercising power, inflicting pain, and committing the largest heist in world history at the expense of most of society–are, at best, fleeting toxic pleasures.

If I were as absolutely empty in all meaningful ways as these people, what I’d probably hate the most is that others are capable of experiencing joy, and even more so, that we can do it even though life is full of incredible tragedy. And of course, it’s like a Shakespearean tragedy on a full-on societal level that so many people are so deeply infected that they will never even realize that they have fucked themselves in the face, and that their so-called leaders have more contempt for them than they do for their made up enemies. Personally, if I ever joined a cult, I’d follow much better leaders than that – I’d fall for one of those super smiley gurus who peddles a different form of happiness.

They will doubtless swallow the next bit of propaganda and scapegoat others as they are being conned and robbed, despite that even white supremacists need health care, abortions, self-autonomy, privacy, security, roads, and in this society especially, money and jobs. All of us also deserve dignity, opportunity, equality, and all the basic human rights: values our government and a decent chunk of the populace have stopped pretending to believe in. (Is it ironic that the biggest liars in our world are also fully laying bare the biggest truth?) And where does that leave joy in the whole equation?

Like with my stomach bug, over the last few months, I have been lying low and feeling powerless in response. But just like yesterday, when I finally felt well enough to fully sanitize every surface of my bathroom (though I may have missed a spot on the ceiling), I am ready to do the best I can to slow down the spread of the societal version of the shits.

Even though I wish we had leaders, I am ready to fight. I’ll do it the ways I know how, can figure out, or get asked to do by others. By continuing to do what I believe in. Showing up and moving forward. Not giving any of my money to institutions that oppress or that don’t stand up for others (including cancelling subscriptions to media), practicing generosity, compassion, and vulnerability. Supporting my and others’ artistic and personal community. Saying weird things that I think are funny regardless of what anyone else thinks (you know who you are). And of course by either actually experiencing joy or at least by remembering that feeling joy is possible. And no one, especially these extremely damaged, humorless, and joyless people, can ever take that away from me.