I love the holiday season, and I love wishing people peace and joy. But I won’t sugarcoat it. Finding joy can feel especially hard right now, when the current administration is openly fueling division, hatred, and fear. Try as I might to shut it out, I can’t fully disengage. Nor do I want to. There is too much at stake. Plus, I’m an eternal optimist, and I refuse to give up hope.
To address this struggle, I am circling back to my time in Paris this past summer, and specifically to The Book of Joy. As I wrote about in my summer blog, The Book of Joy is a remarkable dialogue between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama – two deeply spiritual leaders who have witnessed the worst human suffering and yet still find ways to be joyful. In Paris, I had the time and space to absorb their lessons.
As I think about finding joy during the holiday season, I am inspired by one of their main messages: we as humans can experience joy because of adversity, not in spite of it. The joy they are referring to is different from happiness – it runs deeper. There is actually joy to be found in addressing adversity and working with others to do so. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Our greatest joy is when we seek to do good for others.”
As they describe it, we can determine to be joyful, by embracing our interconnectedness and participating actively in supporting our shared humanity.
The key is compassion and generosity. These two traits are at the center of our humanity. We are wired for it. And embracing these traits makes our lives joyful and meaningful.
- Compassion starts with empathy for others and goes to the next level: wanting what’s best for others. Neuroscience shows us that helping others is like ingesting an elixir – it releases oxytocin (like chocolate does!). It’s healing. And it’s contagious.
- Generosity goes hand in hand with compassion. You can be generous with material things, and you can go beyond that by being generous with your time and your spirit. You can protect people, provide solace, create safe havens. Being kind and generous will make you happier. The old adage, “Tis better to give than to receive” couldn’t be truer. Neuroscience gives us images of the happy brain, and shows that in helping others, we help ourselves. It’s a virtuous circle.
Interestingly, feeling sad about our current state can provide an opportunity to be kinder and more generous. If we are determined to be joyful, our sadness can be turned into action. This can give us a deeper sense of purpose and increase our connectedness. For me, that’s meant:
- Delivering Meals on Wheels with my daughters to frail elders who live in our community. These people are often invisible in our daily lives and many value the contact as much as the food.
- Working with Community Health Center leaders to help them address their funding and identity crisis.
- Advocating for protecting health care coverage at the grassroots level through my work with Healthcare Leaders for Democracy.
- Serving as board chair of Merrimack Health, a safety net hospital system that serves one of Massachusetts’ largest immigrant communities.
Through this, I regularly experience the lessons from Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama: we are most joyful when we focus on others, not ourselves.
It requires keeping an open heart which takes courage. Feeling pain is…. painful. But ironically, it also helps us to experience deeper joy. The bigger and warmer our hearts are, the stronger our sense of aliveness and resilience.
So, I hope you enjoy the gatherings with family and friends this holiday season, including the bright lights and festivity! Cherish your time with loved ones. And embrace the deeper joy that this challenging time can provide.
Happy Holidays, and I’ll see you in 2026!
