on finding joy
joie de vivre, baguettes, a lil hon hon hon sprinkled with some voulez vous coucher avec moi
so im sitting at the table about to break my fast with a buddy of mine and he confesses to me that he no longer feels “joy” in what he does. for him, it’s either a state of anxiety or the lack there of. there’s a longer conversation on mental health here that im simply not qualified to speak on, but i would love for someone to write about it for me to learn.
the conversation comes to a quiet pause, and he tells me about how he wants to be like me. i’m sitting there for a bit and then i ask, well what do you mean bud?
and he goes, “well it seems like you find joy in trying out new things. your newsletter for example! i think that its sick you find joy in curating a list of things you find interesting, beautiful, or funny. like you just go out there and try things, and it seems like you have joy.”
.
.
.
he’s right lmao, i do find joy in doing + trying new things. but i don’t think i was always like this. i can recount an endless number of times i grew discontent and restless where i was at. i vividly remember feelings of feeling “stuck” and not knowing what to do about it. i spent my birthday alone in 2021 because i couldn’t plan anything then if my life had depended on it, and i distinctly remember feeling super lonely and sad. in fact, for like 4 months straight my friday nights were spent chatting about life with my Chicago-based co-worker as we waited for our fucking 2 hour builds
(fuck Java. all my homies hate Java. 2 HOURS? 2??! DOS?! DOE? ITHNAYN?! DUR?! goddamn microservice architecture. and you know what? if we made the slightest mistake, that CI/CD system would have to finish the bullshit we pushed literally 2 minutes prior before it reached the work we ACTUALLY need to push. takes a deep breath*. alright, back to scheduled programming).
i don’t say all that so you can play me the world’s saddest violin. no, i’m trying to tell you that you should try to find what brings you joy but know this shit aint easy. its a journey. there’s no pill for this. i try things out and i try to stick to them long enough to understand how they make me feel and then i decide if i want to keep it in my life. i do think there are some habits, however, that helped me find joy. then id like to share what specifically brings me joy. but first, whats this funny french word:
joie de vivre
i forgot when i first learned this phrase, but i’ll always remember when i first understood it. i was on a walk on a sunny day with a friend of mine in San Francisco (we’ll call him Jimothy hereafter), and we were in the shady side of the street. the sun had just broke through the clouds, and, being that it is SF, it was pretty chilly. my friend asks me if i’d be up to cross the street to walk in the sunny side of the street. i’m like ya sure ok lol. i mean i could care less
jimothy takes a pause and goes, “you know, i once had a professor that was from a really rich family back in college. one of those old money type of families, came off the mayflower and what not”
i nodded to act like i was following, but im from california. i don’t know shit about the pilgrims past my 5th grade textbook, so forget about caring about their descendents and what ship their great x20 granddaddy came on
“they’re all the trustfund types, well to do. like this professor was related to Benjamin Franklin or some founding father. anyways, i was on a walk with him and we were on the shady side of the street back when i was in [some cold ass city in the northeast known for saying car weird]. and HE explains to me about how its a part of joie de vivre to pick, if given a choice between two sides of the street: one shady and one sunny, to always pick the sunny one because it makes your day a little better”
turns out jimothy also had no idea what this man was on about because jimothy is some immigrant kid from [insert a state known for an MTV show that has to do with a particular shore and italians]. but nonetheless the point stuck with me. sometimes finding joy in life isn’t about the grandiose “my life is a movie!!!!” things, but rather noticing the subtleties and acting upon them in some way. and acting on them could literally just mean speaking up and acknowledging the beauty or warmth or whatever positive quality the thing you’re noticing has.
flowers and gradients
id notice on my walks with my friend jimothy how he’d take notice of things in nature. he’d actively point out how green something was or how lush a certain flower was along the sidewalk. i started doing the same thing because i thought that was pretty cool. hey, mimesis is one helluva drug!
this little game of eye-spy didn’t feel like some over the top zen buddhist meditation, its literally just looking at stuff and acknowledging how that thing makes you feel. i started doing this to the point of it probably coming off as contrived. i did it often and consistently, to the point where i was hanging out with friends back in suburbia carrying over the habit and my friends thought i was weird.
the easiest thing for me to notice were flowers. i got really interested in flowers during the pandemic. my walks of solitude were brightened by finding beautiful flowers in my neighborhood and trying to learn a little more about them. til this day, i still don’t know shit about flowers. but it was a dope way to past time when you’re in a overpriced basement studio with essentially no windows all day.
i started taking pictures of them and saving them for myself. occasionally id post them on the gram. id hop on social media, and i wound up finding posters with gradients. being as smooth brained as i am, i just fell in love with gradiemts (i know how i spelled this). there’s no reason. i just made flowers and gradients my personality because, well, who the hell is gonna stop me? lol
over time, this practice of noticing flowers and gradients just made me a more cheerful and joyful person. every time i stepped out, i had an eye out for a flower i haven’t seen before or something that reflected gradients. it made the world more beautiful for me, and this lens made the world worth living in for me in a non-trivial way.
at the corner of pizza hut and taco bell
in the midst of 2021, Chai and Vibes was birthed. this meant throwing myself back into the folds of design. i hadn’t designed jack since i was in middle school (shout out signature banner designers of the 2000’s!). my main source of inspiration, if you can guess… was flowers & gradients.
today, while i still appreciate a güd gradient and a beautiful flower, i have a far more expansive repertoire of material that i take inspo from. but those years of noticing beauty had the unexpected effect of helping me develop my tastes. that’s something i’ve written about before and defined as:
so now all of that taste that’s been developed had to be directed towards creation — i arrived at the corner of taste and creation. i was now making posters, IG stories, tikoks, etc. for our brand. i messed around a lot. i failed more often than i succeeded. most of what i made was hot garbage if i’m being honest. but i was having fun!
to create, because not doing so isn’t an option
the more i delved into creation, i fell in love with different mediums and crafts. i enjoy writing, for example. this is why im up at an ungodly (i mean we are fi ramadan so hmm) 2 am writing this damn thing here. i don’t make a cent from writing. i don’t make a cent from a lot of the things i create. however, creation, i found, brings me the utmost joy. in 2023, it has become my mission to create every single day — no matter how small. it could be a poster or it could be a tweet. it could be an essay i write or it could be a my 3 gratitudes.
i take the rick rubin approach to creativity. that is to say, that if you’re entire life is geared towards creating then anything that you do can be considered “creative.” i find a lot of solace in thinking like this. i don’t feel the pressure to create for the sake of others. i enjoy sharing with others because i like the idea of being able to create and share with the rest of the world. but im quite alright if no one ever makes it past the subtitle above.
finding what brings you joy isn’t some vain ritual that you can repeat over and over again. it’s not simply a sentiment that you repeat like a mantra because you heard someone else say it. its showing up everyday, taking on the risk of feeling sad because the thing you tried ain’t making you happier, and being willing to try and fail and try and fail over and over again. and then finally, if you’re lucky, you stumble upon one or a few things that brightens up your day. and those little things make life worth living. hope you find it, reader, and best of luck on your journey of finding joy.
sincerely,
haroon
p.s. yes the subtitle is a bunch of random french phrases and words