Currently, there’s a certain popular method to decluttering your home that relies on the “joy” sparked by your household items. Beyond helping us to get rid of unnecessary clothes, papers, and kitchen tools, however, I think “joy” could be used as a measure for other mundane things too, such as our relationships, our careers, and what we do with our free time. These are all things that we will interact with regularly, or that are long-lasting, so I think it’s important that they are rewarding. Really, I hope that we can all choose joy not only when it comes to our personal belongings, but also when it comes to our friends, our jobs, and also our past-times. For those of you wondering how that works exactly, here’s a personal example about finding joy in extracurriculars.
A quick rewind to my freshman year, and you’ll find me as eager as any other freshman to join all sorts of campus clubs and communities. Fall Activities Night was overwhelming, but I managed to jot down my email address on a dozen or more sign-up sheets. I was ready to volunteer, be involved with the student community, and maybe even take up leadership roles. Fast forward to third year, and you’ll find that my palette of extracurriculars has significantly changed since then. Choosing to drop most of the extra-curricular plans that I had set myself up with in first year was more of an intuitive decision than a well thought out one. I couldn’t find much motivation to continue them into my second or third year, so I chose to end my commitment at the next turn of the semester instead. In my second year, I noticed that a similar pattern had occurred. Once again at the start of the school year I signed myself up for a variety of activities — to my own credit, they were a different variety from what I had signed up for in my first year — only to find that by the end of that year, I had no desire to continue with those activities either.
I knew that this kind of behaviour was a bit problematic. First of all, it gave the impression that I had some issues with long-term commitments. Second of all, it made me question my own interests and long-term goals. I just wanted to find something worthwhile to do with my free time, and the things that I had attempted to get into were worthwhile things (they included things like tutoring, committee positions, volunteering, and leadership development). I was frustrated, and frankly, a bit concerned, that nothing I tried seemed to be sticking.
Regarding the first point about long-term commitments, I was convinced that this was not actually the case. I believed that I was quite capable of making long-term commitments. After all, I am still involved in a program from high school even after I made the move to Montreal. I make the 5-hour trek back to Toronto every two months or so just so I can participate. I think that definitely classifies as a long-term commitment. So, what made this particular commitment last so much longer than anything that I tried picking up in university? After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that I looked forward to helping out with this program back at home, whereas on the other hand, there were a few university commitments that I did “just for the sake of doing it” (i.e. just to get the job done) or, as much as I hate to admit, so that I could build my reputation as a hard-working and diligent individual.
So, it wasn’t the long-term commitment that I had an issue with, but rather my self-identified interests and goals. Much to my dismay, this point pokes at an even deeper question that I knew I didn’t have a complete answer to: why am I even here, studying what I’m studying, and trying to get to where I’m trying to go? I was confused because the clubs and activities that I had tried to join were all good choices. They were valuable opportunities that (I thought) were important if I really wanted to get to where I planned on going with my career. Everyone else seemed to value these opportunities — why did they seem to enjoy it so much while I found the tasks uninteresting, forced, and lukewarm? Once, when I was describing this sort of contradictory feeling to a friend of mine, she suggested that instead of trying to pick up more projects that I felt were necessary in order to advance my career path, I should focus my efforts on figuring out what my passions were exactly. So, rather than force myself to do something that I don’t find rewarding, I should work on a project in an area that matters to me. After all, the path to success isn’t a single linear path. And here is where I lay the basis of my claim that you can use “joy” to evaluate where you spend your free time.
Fortunately, I have actually come across a few experiences that are wholly joy-giving (the high school program I cited before is one of them), and so, I do have some constructive pieces of advice. For me, there are three important distinctions between joy-giving activities and joyless but perhaps worthwhile projects:
- First, how much I look forward to them.
- Second, how the events are remembered and
- Third, how much I’d like to share the experience with someone else.
I often anticipate what I find joyous with excitement (like I mentioned with that other long-term commitment of mine back in Toronto), but usually, this is restricted to one-time events or events that occur at low frequencies. Even joy-giving activities can become routine, after all, if they are repeated regularly. Therefore, I would also distinguish joy-giving activities by how they are remembered. In my mind, the things that I find particularly joyful are stamped differently from the things that I find to be “just OK” or “worthwhile but would never do again”. Lastly, I think it’s pretty natural to want to share good things with those you love, so the desire to share about an experience is also a good marker of the amount of joy the experience has brought you. Instead of responding with a simple “it was not bad” when your friend asks how the event went, there’s a desire to elaborate and share the smaller details about the experience and why it matters to you.
To finish, I’d like to end by thanking the readers who made it this far. If you can’t relate to this entire joy philosophy of mine, thanks for still listening to my thoughts. If you can relate any of the ideas that I have put forward, I’d like to encourage you to make 2019 a joyful year for yourself. Choose to do things that bring you joy. These are the experiences that are self-motivating. These are the experiences that will make for interesting conversations with friends. And these are the experiences that you’ll remember fondly.
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