Happy Happy Joy Joy

The other day, somebody (I won’t say who, but I’m married to her) described an interview she heard on the radio with the psychologist Dr. Judith Joseph, author of a book about high-functioning depressives called High Functioning: Overcome Your Hidden Depression and Reclaim Your Joy. In the interview, Joseph described herself as suffering from anhedonia, the inability to experience joy. The-person-who-shall-remain-nameless asked me if I suffer from the same. The question surprised me. While it’s true that I’m a high-functioning adult who suffers from depression, it’s hardly hidden. But do I ever experience joy?

I really had to think about it.

To paraphrase Lionel Richie, I am rarely dancing on the ceiling. Even my happiest moments are often tempered with some kind of low-key dread. The birth of my children, for example, while joyous, was also overwhelming and scary. My wedding, joyous, but tempered with the worry that friends and family were enjoying themselves. Booking a good job tempered with the fear that the show will be canceled or I’ll be fired.

Is that anhedonia or just being Jewish?

Since she asked, the question has sat in the pit of my stomach like a potato knish. At the same time, I’ve been doing a lot of contemplation about art, especially musical art, because music is the most physical and direct art. It’s soundwaves pushed across the air to our ears. Music literally moves in ways that, say, literature does not. Tonight, I am happy to report, I had a joyous night of music.

I’ve probably mentioned my friends’ band before. David Wain and Ken Marino put together the Middle-Aged Dad Jam Band during the pandemic as something to do while the world shut down. In the years since, MADJB has become a touring party band featuring tons of great musicians and guest artists who sing at their shows. Tonight, they invited me to perform with them at San Francisco SketchFest to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the movie we all made together, Wet Hot American Summer.

My singing voice is, at best, bad. Even so, I managed to warble out a passable I Melt With You and to join in for the chorus of Duran Duran’s Rio. Very fun, but the real joy came from watching my friends make music in front of hundreds of happy people.

Last night, I joined another Wet Hot co-star, Elizabeth Banks, for a celebration of her work. I moderated the event, and we spent 90 minutes on stage basically making fun of each other. I love Liz, but I rarely get to see her. Every time I do, I’m reminded of how f-ing smart that woman is. Last night, it brought me legit joy to listen to her speak about pretty much anything: art, business, politics, but especially when she was busting my balls.

One of the things we talked about last night was her experience, a little later in her career, putting Pitch Perfect together, and the joy she got from seeing that cast of mostly unknown actresses rise with that film. I imagine it’s the feeling old ball players get after they turn to coaching. Winning as a player is great, but I can imagine winning as a coach is even more rewarding. As I get older, I relate much more to being the coach than the player. As I get older, I realize that joy – at least the way I experience joy – is never directly about me. While I often feel happiness for myself, I only ever experience my fullest realization of joy when it’s in celebration of somebody else.

My fat face beside her lovely one.

What distinguishes happiness from joy? It’s not a question I’d considered before confronting my own apparent joylessness. Happiness, I think, is the momentary cessation of desire. Joy is happiness’s apogee, the crest of a wave. Happiness is earthy but joy is sacred. Maybe that’s why I can feel happiness on my behalf but joy on behalf of others. Because the sacred is always about that which is larger than the personal self. The sacred is that which speaks to us all; joy lives somewhere in there.

It’s probably possible to live in joy. I don’t mean bliss, which carries with it the suggestion of levitating above the muck of humanity. I mean living authentically within the world in such a way that you lead with the fullness of your heart. I imagine somebody like Jimmy Carter living joyfully. Or Bishop Desmond Tutu. In 2004, the title of “World’s happiest man” was bestowed upon the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard after a research project found that Ricard’s brain exhibited tremendous levels of gamma waves during meditations on compassion.

Must one have a sacred practice to experience joy? I suspect the answer is no. Instead, I think joy arises from alleviating suffering in others. A sacred practice would naturally lead to such a desire, but I don’t think such a practice is a precondition. There are many joyful atheists and many miserable pietists. What distinguishes them isn’t their belief systems, but the daily expressions of their humanity.

I’m grateful for the question posed to me by that spouse-who-shall-remain-nameless. Yes, I’m a high-functioning depressive. Yes, I’m a neurotic. No, I don’t suffer from anhedonia. I certainly don’t need to “reclaim” my joy. I just need to understand joy in order to better open myself to it. Not for the purpose of hoarding joy, but for the purpose of sharing it. We’re not meant to hold it. If self-contemplation is the potato knish that sits in your stomach, joy is the hot potato we pass around. The “world’s happiest man” already has his epitaph picked out: “Become a better human,” it will one day read, “To better serve others.”