I find joy often when I’m away from the chaos of my daily life. When there are no flashcards, no practice exam questions, and no anxiety about whether I remembered to submit my assignment. It’s when I’m outside, in nature, just being fully present in the moment. I remember when I took a vacation to Portland and stumbled upon a forest headed to a Japanese garden. I couldn’t stop smiling, taking pictures, and saying “I LOVE IT HERE” to my friend. I couldn’t really use words to describe the feeling, but oh I can still remember what it felt like.

For myself Joy arrives out of an alchemical process I follow throughout the day. My Joy is an expanding leaf, a sanctuary for others to shelter under, or a flower pollenated by the activities of these others, and become seed. Maybe my Joy fruits to nourish passers by.

Often I wake feeling too weary to move, whatever joy of the day before drained away at night. I may be negative about events, my positivity rating as low as my anxiety is prepared to run. Yet I remind myself these feelings are not real, as long as I follow a process I developed out of years of negativity and anxiety. So upon waking I commence to set myself straight and clear of negativity, to face the day without need of a mask for appearance sake, which may be on occasion be a necessary face to my Joy. One could call my routine Yoga, involving physical exercise, stretching, self-massage and meditation upon what delivers my Joy that day. I may take herbs, read poetry and experiment, with whatever comes to mind to support my meditative condition, including assessing my wife, child, dogs and the Season, remembering I engage life amid other forces beyond myself.

The day can then begin, and not before! This is the only matter I prioritise in Life, generally above the needs of others. Without Joy I am of no great service, certainly not myself. With this Joy comes health and an improved resistance to illness, an ability to resist temptation, holding my focus in happiness with Joy as its flower. And finally, when I feel my happiness wane and Joy wilt during the day, I top up on Yoga, or least some part of my morning practice, adapted as necessary with sufficient regularity to continually produce leaves and flowers.

As for me, I find joy in sleep because it gives my mind a break from overthinking. I also feel relaxed when I play with dogs. Recently, my friend’s little white dog, Naonao, stayed at my home while my friend was away. At night, he would lie beside me as I fell asleep. His quiet presence made me feel calm and comforted. It made me realise that joy does not always have to feel exciting or intense. Sometimes it is a quiet sense of ease: being able to stop thinking for a while and feel that a little companion is close by.

I recently got a bus to Wells from Bristol Train Station to see a family friend who was a chiropractor. It was around 4pm and I’d left London at midday. As I was looking out the window of the bus I got the sense that this land was like home for me. The sun was warm through the window and I felt like I’d lived here my whole life. I have lived on this earth my whole life, I thought. I grew up in the South West, near the sea, but I hadn’t ever lived here in the countryside like this.

I really love the feeling the earth has at this time of year. It was October 2nd, and I was about to start the second year of my Master’s degree. When I left home for the first time aged 18, I moved to London for university. I remember so distinctly in Bloomsbury the smell of the air and the temperatures of the days shifting colder, but still so bright from the lowering sun in the sky, and so fresh, each week more and more of the days waking up to see condensation on my windows. This was something I came to love innately in my body. Every October I feel the same emotions I did that year, anticipation for the winter, even sometimes slight homesickness, but also a sense of renewal, like I can reinvent my life again and again. I do wonder when I will stop living my life by the academic calendar. I’m back at the same university, in the same department I was at for my undergrad which I started 9 years ago. In a way it feels like coming back to myself, and this deep internal feeling of completeness I get at this time of year has only intensified since moving back to London. I think this is what joy feels like to me.

As I looked out the window of the bus to Wells, I could see a tiny grey cloud in front of a rippled sky, where a plane trail cut the clouds in half, crossing over the sun. It made me feel like I was actually not on earth, but on a different planet. I was so happy to be alive.

This week my dog, Cody, has brought me a lot of joy, I’ve been taking her to the park and sitting on the grass and just observing how she is when she can just be. In these moments she often scootches along on her belly and rolls over a few times. I know this means she’s experiencing a burst of joy and that feeling is contagious and passes the joy onto me.

When I was first asked where I find joy, I didn’t have an answer. Indulging my appetite, owning nice things, the template of a quiet, happy life: they bring me pleasure, even comfort, but not joy.


The closest I come to joy is when I play Call of Cthulhu, a tabletop role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft’s stories.


In real life, I keep running into things I can’t change: gender inequality, a ceiling I can’t break through. There is always something to prove.


Lovecraft feared almost everything unfamiliar to him: people of other races, women, foreign lands, and what science revealed about how small we are. But fear creates power. He imagined a universe of ancient, cold gods who do not care about us at all. In Keziah Mason, a witch whose strange geometry lets her walk between worlds, his anxieties about women and the unknown converge.


To these gods, woman or man, beautiful or plain, high or low, it makes no difference who we are or what we sacrifice. We are all just ants dancing. Maybe it is a twisted kind of equality, but I find it freeing. In this world, I don’t have to prove anything.


In the end, the investigators’ bodies may mutate, their minds may break, or they may simply be erased. What remains is only a hymn to courage. And courage, and the light it gives off, have no gender.


So my joy is not a peaceful one. It comes when even the question of power loses its meaning, when I can flow beyond the confines of a single body or definition. It is born in a world where human hierarchies stop working.

For me, joy can come from something as simple as watching a sunset. When I see the soft, peaceful colours slowly changing across the sky, I often feel calm and quietly happy. In that moment, I do not need to achieve anything or receive anything from someone else. I can simply stop, look, and appreciate what is in front of me. The beauty of the sunset seems to draw me away from my worries and reminds me that there is more to life than my daily tasks and concerns.

This experience makes me reflect on my own humanity. I realise that joy does not always depend on what I can accomplish or possess. Sometimes, it comes from being open and attentive to the world around me. The sunset does not exist for me, yet I am able to recognise its beauty and be moved by it. My joy, then, comes from this quiet encounter: being present, feeling wonder, and allowing the beauty of the world to touch me.

Last Friday I felt like I was carrying the weight of the week as I moved with difficulty through the rainy streets of London. I was feeling homesick and I was rushing because I had just enough time to squeeze in the last workout of the week. Waiting for the bus on the stop I noticed that the blowing leaves were bathed in a faint ray of sunlight. Their movements cast a dance of light and shadows over Euston station’s war memorial. Alongside, the drizzle shone through the golden rays. This beautiful picture suddenly made me feel complete as I embraced the warmth of the sunshine regardless of the cold, rainy afternoon.

For me, joy is a breakthrough that lightens up my experience: having a sudden flash of insight on an incomprehensible topic, noticing beauty in ordinary streets and objects, or feeling accomplished during a demanding workout.

Last weekend I was in Brussels to see a friend, and she messaged me that he’d be 30 minutes late. So I looked up a café nearby and walked there with Google Maps, a bit nervous. When I got there, the café had creepy characters and Halloween-ish lettering, and I almost turned back. But lots of locals were going in, families, friends, older people, and it smelled of coffee and butter and waffles. So I went in. My latte came in a big mug with the foam right up to the brim, held up only by surface tension. It was exactly what I wanted. I think my joy is finding something good in a place I don’t know.

I have been living in London for 3 months. During the period of staying here, I have found that cooking is one of the most joyful things that I can have in my daily routine.

Cooking brings me back to my hometown, Thailand, in many ways. The first thing that brings me joy is ingredients. They remind me of the stuff in my mom’s fridge. Thus, seeing some ingredients from Thailand, bought from the Asian supermarket, makes me feel like I’m at my own home, not in a small studio room, in some ways.

Furthermore, the smell and the taste of food I have cooked by myself, with all recipes coming from my mom’s cookbook, also bring me joy. Even in the times when I struggle with my studies or feel so lonely, having food that tastes and smells like it was cooked by my mom can give me power and energy.

Importantly, I have noticed that it’s not only about the food that brings me joy, but also the ways that I try to relate home-cooked food to my own nostalgia, especially the things that I did together with my mom, which give me a feeling of joy most of the time when I’m in London.

As someone who was born in a coastal city, walking on the beach on cloudy and rainy days, in complete silence, is something that brings me joy. I love seeing the huge cargo ships passing by. I love seeing people walking with their soaked dogs, and dogs and children wearing their little raincoats.
From time to time, I come across these little rock sculptures. They are made through a practice called rock balancing, which consists of carefully balancing rocks on top of one another.
I remember seeing them from time to time near the pier where I used to go. I like imagining the person who made them patiently choosing the rocks, considering their shape, weight, size and colour, and trying different combinations until they finally stand together. And then, perhaps, leaving them there for someone else to find. I think what I like most about them is their temporary nature. I never know if I will find them again. They are always different from one another, and eventually they will fall apart. For a while, though, someone has taken the time to make them, and someone else has taken the time to notice them.

There are many ways in which I find joy.
Sometimes, it is simply sitting in silence, fully present in the moment. Sometimes, it is being in nature and feeling connected with it. Sometimes, it is offering my help and support to people or animals who are in need. Sometimes, it is sharing what I have with others. Sometimes, it is quietly sending good wishes to people in distant corners of the world whom I may never meet. And sometimes, it is simply recognizing the loving-kindness and compassion that others bring into the world. Perhaps the deepest joy comes from knowing that I was able to make someone’s path a little easier. Even a small act of kindness, a moment of support, or a simple gesture that lightens another person’s difficult day give so much joy.

At the river this morning early, my joy was in doing Qi Gung first thing in light drizzle – it felt amazingly peaceful and joyous in equal measure. The neighbours have got me marked down as nuts! Obviously.

A lot of things bring me joy- the simple things – seeing my kids happy, laughing with friends and family, the smile on my husbands face, fresh air, birds singing, watching sports, seeing people succeed and doing what they want, and my pets that offer unconditional love and affection!

Some moments of joy take up permanent residence in memory. I remember this Christmas Eve morning at a secluded Zen temple in the outskirts of Kyoto. After meditation in the zendo I came out to these giant fluffy snowflakes falling in silence. I wish I could share the video with you here too!

Green spaces in my yard.

Simple soups, single sprigs of dill, and ancestral strains of Japanese black rice.

I’m recently finding joy in my partner’s extravagant brunch plate creations and wondering how best to honor it: support my partner in sharing these dishes further, such as by opening a cafe? Learn together how to cook for large groups of people, especially in times of crisis. Or just eat!