Somewhere Along the Way, Joy Got Very Organised

 

As adults, we seem to prefer it that way. We like joy with boundaries. Joy that fits neatly around work, responsibility, and the general business of being a person who has remembered their passwords. We like it planned, earned, and ideally justified. Even our fun wants a rationale now.

Joy, once upon a time, did not ask for permission. It happened in the middle of things. It interrupted. It was inefficient. Now, it tends to arrive with a booking reference.

We put it in calendars. We save it for weekends. We call it a “treat” or a “break”, as if it might otherwise get ideas above its station. We say things like at least it was productive or it was good for me, just in case anyone — ourselves included — questions why we needed it at all.

There is a particular adult version of joy that feels very tidy. It is the kind that comes with effort and planning and a sense of moral correctness. A run that hurts but counts. A hobby that quietly turns into a side hustle. A holiday that needs to be maximised. Even rest, somehow, becomes something to do properly.

None of this is bad, exactly. It is just… organised.

What gets lost, I think, is the messier version. The joy that is not impressive. The joy that doesn’t photograph well, or translate into growth, or make a neat story later. The joy that happens because something is funny, or warm, or unexpectedly light.

Children don’t optimise joy. They do not stack it. They don’t wait until it is deserved. They also do not explain it. It just happens, and then it’s gone, and something else takes its place.

As adults, we tend to pack joy up carefully, like we are worried it might spill. We save it for when everything else is done. We tell ourselves we will get to it later, once things calm down, once we are less tired, once life is more orderly. Joy becomes something that lives slightly in the future.

But life, inconveniently, rarely gets that orderly.

Joy shouldn't be something we need to reclaim or rediscover or work towards. It is still here, just waiting for a bit of looseness. A gap. A moment where we are not asking what this is for.

The problem is not that we do not want joy anymore. It is that we have trained ourselves to only recognise it when it behaves.

I don’t have a solution for this. I’m not sure it needs one. This is not an argument for quitting responsibilities or chasing happiness at all costs. It is just a noticing.

A wondering about what might happen if joy didn’t have to justify itself quite so much. If it could be small, fleeting, and slightly inconvenient again. If it did not need to improve us, or mean anything, or be turned into a lesson.

Somewhere along the way, joy got very organised.

I am starting to think it doesn’t need to be.