Holding onto joy in times of struggle can be challenging, especially when all you want to do is scream in traffic or slap a Republican. But there’s something cathartic about allowing yourself to boil over in anger, rejecting all good things and embracing the inner rage. It’s a kind of bodily recalibration. A thoughtfulness purge. A red mist frenzy if you will. Letting desperation and ego take control is a way of survival too, even if it’s not as socially acceptable as “embracing gratitude” or practicing whatever mindfulness hack some millionaire author is peddling to spiritually hungry masses.
But that is where we find ourselves: in a world where the White House retweets an AI-generated image of the president as the pope. Yes, that’s real.
And even more infuriating, we get to witness this foolishness while we’re locked into a frustrating system where the richest one percent own nearly half the world’s wealth, and the bottom half fights over less than one percent. A system where billionaires treat Washington like a game board, manipulating interest rates, playing with tariffs, inflating markets and eroding consumer confidence while entire communities get flattened under the fallout. We know it’s nonsense. We know there are no economic theories at play. It’s nothing more than brazen power and money grabs disguised as policy and “patriotism” (ex: plans for a gross display of military might on the felonious president’s birthday).
And it’s more than rising prices or a dip in the stock market (that’s just a blip on an infinite upward graph for the wealthy). If you’re working class, it’s your entire upward trajectory, or lack thereof. The cost of essentials like groceries, gas, diapers, utilities—none of it is on a sliding scale. The rich and the poor pay the same for a gallon of milk. For eggs. For heat in the winter, air conditioning in the increasingly hot summers. And while the wealthy have assets that grow, that climb with inflation, that benefit from market swings—the working class just spends. And that money? It’s gone. Not invested. Not compounding. Just…gone.
There’s no rebate for surviving this version of capitalism, the kind we’ve allowed to rot into oligarchy. When prices surge, it’s not an inconvenience. It’s a theft. A silent tax you’ll pay for the rest of your life. Because unless your income skyrockets, there’s no making that money back, no catching up. You’re not just spending more, you’re losing ground. And that loss shapes everything that comes next.
So we’re stuck in a system that serves only the few. And while they wreck the economy with one hand, they undermine public health with the other, handing the FDA to conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and grifters with no regard for science or safety. They are playing pandemic roulette, and we’re the ones with everything to lose.
The system’s not just broken.
It’s fucked.
But as hard as it is to believe, this isn’t a political post. Though every time I open my mouth these days, something politically resentful seems to slither out. But behind that toxic river flows the rest of me, my actual self. The one who was once a child with wide-eyed wonder, filled with hope for a world begging to be explored and cherished. That version still exists, buried beneath the muck of adulthood, pushing for one more glorious breath. Desperately protecting the flesh and lungs and life that continue to nourish a troubled mind.
Whew! Not the softest lead-in for a post that’s supposedly about joy. But if you’re still here, maybe you get it. Maybe you know that joy doesn’t equate to happiness or even contentment. Joy is the will to wake up and keep doing life. To take the damn dog for a walk. To show up for your family and friends. Answer that text. Do laundry. Keep going.
For me, to keep going is…complicated.
Because the truth is, I’ve experienced the euphoric side of joy. I’ve felt it while staring out the window of my parent’s ‘89 blue-and-silver Ford Aerostar crossing between Blythe and Indio, watching the desert flick past as the A/C struggled to fight off 120 degree heat. I’ve felt it on ski lifts scaling up green mountains in the summer with my grandpa holding on to my belt loop in case I slipped, as if loving concern could override gravity. I’ve felt it crossing the Puget Sound, icy cold air slicing through me, realizing that the world was beautiful and brutal and how lucky I was to be in it.
From my perspective, I saw the world when I was growing up. No, I didn’t travel to Europe as a kid, we didn’t have family trips to resorts or spendy vacations. But my parents took me and my brothers across deserts, forests, oceans, and cities that felt like other worlds. I saw the high country of Flagstaff—tall pines, cool air, a different planet for a state most people think of as desert and cactus. I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and later, descended into it. I camped at Phantom Ranch and explored trails under the stars with my best friend from kindergarten, a life moment we still talk about four decades later. I saw the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Canyon de Chelly, Sunset Crater, and most of Arizona’s rural parks and forests by the time I was a teenager.
I stayed in creaky old cabins in Red River, New Mexico. Fished in alpine lakes and icy creeks. Ran through forests and wildflower meadows. Drove across the wearying sprawl of the Texas plains. Toured Colorado through Silverton, Breckenridge, Aspen, and wound through the towering Rockies—all by car.
We traced the spine of the West Coast through Sequoia, Yosemite, and the Redwoods. I stood in the presence of thousand-year-old trees. We crossed through Oregon and on to Washington, where Seattle seemed to rise above the sea and the ferry carried us across Puget Sound to islands I never knew existed. Friday Harbor, Anacortes, and Victoria, B.C. A wax museum that scared the hell out of me. A miniature army frozen in time behind a glass hotel window.
Our adventures didn’t end in the West. My parents somehow got us a cross-country flight to Washington, D.C. We walked the Capitol, toured the White House, and we saw every damn Smithsonian. My mom even managed to get us a meeting with the Secretary of the Treasury, who was signing her name next to her printed signature on our dollar bills. We rented a minivan, and ventured to see Philadelphia and New York. We drove through Manhattan in a minivan like we belonged there. We ascended the Statue of Liberty and even the roof-top observation deck at the World Trade Center. My mom snapped a photo of me on top of the South Tower. I still look at it sometimes.
And on and on, up through Boston, Maine, to Montreal and Quebec City, where the street signs turned to French and it did feel like Europe.
We did all of it on a budget. We stayed in cheap motels. We packed coolers and ate sandwiches. There was no GPS. No cell phones. Just a pile of AAA guides and maps, a highlighter, prayer, and a sense that we would see something amazing. My parents made the world feel accessible. Not just physically, but spiritually.
That’s what joy was to me then. It wasn’t happiness, exactly. It was awe. Exploration and discovery. The feeling of the window rolled down, catching the wind in your hand and the world racing past saying, come see.
Those childhood roadtrips gave me the bug for adventure. How to trust that a forest or a trail or a diner off the highway could carry you to the next unexpected moment. How to keep showing up.
That instinct to seek out and appreciate nature—to go looking for it even when the world feels hollow—stayed with me. Eventually, I started adventuring on my own, planning road trips, hikes, and backpacking into the wilderness solo. No GPS. No cell service. No contact. Just the road, the trail, the stars, and whatever was waiting inside me.
My first real solo multi-day trip was the High Sierra Trail, a 60-mile trek through Sequoia National Park, stretching from the wetlands of Crescent Meadow to the granite monuments of the Great Western Divide. On the second night, I sat outside my tent at Hamilton Lakes, sipping whiskey and listening to Enya on my AirPods. The sun had disappeared behind the cliffs, but the stars came alive one by one until the sky was full and wild.
It wasn’t peace. Not exactly. It was clarity. A clarity that doesn’t soothe, but sharpens.
I wept under that sky. I wasn’t fixed. I wasn’t redeemed. I was real. Present. Exhausted, but alive.
Since then, I’ve trekked wilderness all over California. Summited Mt. Whitney and the Six Pack of Peaks multiple times. Backpacked through Oregon and Washington. Hiked the rain-slicked Kalalau Trail on Kauai, where the red earth slips beneath your feet, trying to carry you to the sea.
But every switchback that hurt like hell offered a view at the top that whispered, You made it. You’re still here.
My solo adventures weren’t just about presence, or even about the beauty of nature. What started as a search for solitude became something else entirely. It became a way of learning how to be in the world, even when it stopped making sense. They became the way I started reconciling with reality. With adulthood. With all the things I hadn’t understood as a child riding in the back of a minivan.
Because as a kid, I saw the monuments. The parks. The history. I learned how to read the AAA guidebook. But no one taught me how to read between the lines. It wasn’t until adulthood that I learned what all that history cost. What it took to make those parks “public.” Who was driven from that land. Who was enslaved to build those cities. And how the wealth of this country was built not on greatness, but on brutality disguised as legacy.
That realization doesn’t come in a single moment. It arrives in waves. An extended adolescence into adulthood, when you start confronting the world as it really is.
I came across one of my journal entries from a few years ago:
One night near San Jacinto, I laid awake in my tent, half frozen, listening to something scuffle through the rocks nearby. I wasn’t afraid. Not exactly. I just felt… unshielded. Like the forest saw everything I was. It didn’t judge. It just waited.
I remember being scared shitless that night, even though I softened it when I put pen to paper. I didn’t have warm enough clothes or shelter, and I shivered through the night. I thought about survival.
That’s what adulthood feels like sometimes. On good days, it’s just a quiet yet persistent confrontation. A world that is beautiful, yes, but also brutal. And knowing that doesn’t cancel the awe. It deepens it. Because when you know what it costs to keep showing up—when you really know—and you do it anyway? That’s everything. That’s what turns movement into meaning.
Traversing mountains, swimming in lakes, and camping in the woods used to be a religious experience when I was a kid away at church camp. These days, it awakens something quieter. Not faith, but presence. A reminder that I live, that I choose to.
And that’s the essence of joy. It isn’t easy. It’s not handed to you at the trailhead. You earn it. Step by aching step. Moment by moment. Thought by thought.
And when you finally stop moving, and the silence settles in, your thoughts have nothing left to wrestle. That’s when it shows up.
Not as relief, but as truth.
So yeah—I hike. I meditate under stars. I cry in the woods and muse about civic ethics like they’re still going to save us.
And then I come home and experience the full brunt of the Trader Joe’s parking lot, where I get into a tiff with a man who’s blocking the entry waiting for a spot that clearly isn’t going to open up, while a dozen spots sit empty only yards ahead.
I wait. I hum a tune. I try not to lose it.
But then I do the thing. I lean out the window, gently suggest he try one of the open spots. I do it with a smile. I perform it with care—knowing full well what the devil is doing through me. The man waves me off.
Another minute. More trunk fiddling. More reverse lights. More trunk fiddling. Absolute refusal to move, that poor blinker just doing its thing in vain.
I try again: “Just wondering how long you’re planning to wait. There’s a whole row of empty spots right up there.” And then, just for fun, I add: “I’m not honking yet, but everyone behind me is about to start, and I can’t promise I won’t join in.”
He snaps. “You need to calm the hell down.”
I say, “Okay, sir. Just letting you know.”
Eventually, almost five minutes in amidst an orchestra of horns at this point (yes, this author absolutely joined in), he gives up, pulls forward, parks in one of the plethora of spots he could’ve taken the whole time.
I park. I get out. We lock eyes. I smile and shake my head. Nothing aggressive. Just a polite bless your little heart from across the pavement.
Later inside, of course—there he is again at checkout, ranting to the cashier about how everyone was so rude to him in the lot.
A chuckle slips out. Couldn’t help it.
He hears me. Glares. “You shouldn’t be in this lane.”
I say, “Okay,” and scoot to the one next door, still smiling.
And then I catch the eye of my cashier. Just a flicker of a grin forming in the corner of their mouth.
That moment—that tiny, unspoken alliance—was joy.
A little righteous. A little petty. But I’m still here, showing up, alive.