A case against Joy
Restoring the full aperture of experience
Photo by Timothy Dachraoui via Unsplash
I’ve noticed in recent years that leadership and development conversations seem to focus on joy as an outcome or metric that we should be tracking, and that it might point to whether or not you are aligned and ‘on the right track.’ It’s like joy or bliss should be a constant experience, or else you are behind the 8-ball. And there is an irony in that concept, because the very nature of joy is balanced with the nature of sadness or non-joy (I am reminded of an infant experiencing constant joy until they literally break down into tears of overstimulation..)
To be fair, there is something understandable and compassionate about this trend. People are simply exhausted in these brittle systems that are breaking around us and to be honest, joy sounds a lot like relief right now. But I find myself really struggling to adopt this singular focus on joy. It’s not that it’s wrong, I just don’t think it’s the full picture.
When joy becomes the goal of ‘success’ or even ‘awakening’ to purpose, the experience of life itself subtly narrows. Moments become assessed for quality and amount of joy rather than being met for the feelings they naturally contain, which end up ranked on a joy-scale - 100 being joy and all other feelings falling in ‘less-than’ levels.
When joy is the metric, life becomes something to optimize instead of something to inhabit.
And we all know that joy is only experienceable when we have other feelings to contrast it with. By only focusing exclusively on the emotion of joy, we lose the very texture that allows joy to be, and more importantly, we fail to see the beauty in other moments that aren’t as bold: the quiet middle states of equilibrium, the coziness and calm of hygge, the bittersweet moments of smiling and crying at once, undramatic stillness, and that subtle beauty we experience that doesn’t announce itself as joy at all - all the pastels of the emotional colour spectrum.
Framing life around perpetual joy risks becoming lopsided, not because joy is unworthy but because no single emotional state can hold the whole of lived reality.
A wider lens: non-attachment, not emotional suppression
I’ve noticed a funny trend that comes up particularly when Eastern philosophies are translated into modern leadership language. It’s almost like the perceived goal of transcendence is to flatten your ‘ugly’ emotions and achieve a state of constant bliss. But as I see it, this is neither the tradition nor the experience.
A non-attached orientation doesn’t minimize feeling, it minimizes resistance.
Joy still arises fully, but so does grief, tenderness, awe, disappointment and care. But its not about the amplitude of feeling, it’s the non-holding of them. Emotions (‘good’ or ‘bad’) are still experienced in real time, it’s just that they aren’t being extended by narrative, identity or expectation. They complete themselves almost in that moment, which from the outside can look neutral, but from the inside feels unobstructive.
Re-reading the Zen Farmer
One of my favourite parables is of the Zen Farmer, and it often is told in a way that sounds like emotional detachment:
A farmer’s horse runs away. When neighbours come to console him in his bad luck, he responds with: “Good luck, bad luck - who knows?”
And then the horse comes back with several mares. The neighours congratulate him on his fortune, to which he responds: “Good luck, bad luck - who knows?”
His son is then to be found training the new mares, has an accident and breaks his leg. The neighbours extend their sorrow at his poor fortune, and again he responds with: “Good luck, bad luck - who knows?”
The story ends with the military coming that week to conscript soldiers, and the son’s broken leg keeps him from war..
This is often read through a lens of indifference - you could easily add in “who cares?” after every ‘who knows’.. But that interpretation misses the human middle. A more evolved reading might be:
When the horse returns, the farmer notices the beauty, vitality and new life entering the field.
When the son is injured, the farmer meets him with care, empathy and presence.
What he does not do is cling to the pleasure or prolong the pain.
Feeling is not absent. Attachment is.
This form of appreciation doesn’t seek to preserve the moment indefinitely. Instead, joy can be appreciated without being hoarded, sorrow can be honored without being rehearsed, and meaning can arise without being extracted. The goal isn’t to detach from life, it’s to experience intimacy in the moment without caging it, and in leadership, this matters deeply.
Joy is the capacity to remain present through all phases and emotions
without bargaining for a different one.
Many leaders today are navigating complex situations that don’t have clear resolution, responsibility without control of the means, and systems that can’t be ‘fixed’ by positivity. In these challenging contexts, joy-as-metric feels hollow because the frame is too simple. What is needed is not brighter emotion, but greater coherence.
When leaders are taught to seek joy, they may inadvertently learn to avoid discomfort.
When leaders learn to meet experience as it is, they develop steadiness, clarity, and trust in movement.
Coherence doesn’t demand joy, it allows it, along with grief, neutrality, uncertainty, and care, to move through the system without distortion.
This is not an argument against joy - joy is welcome! But so is everything else. The work is not to feel better, it’s to see clearly, meet what is here in the moment, and allow life to move through us without unnecessary friction. In that clarity, joy often appears quietly, briefly, and exquisitely.
And then it goes.
As it should.
Journal Prompt: Where in your life have you been measuring experience against joy rather than meeting it as it is?