A smooth forehead betokens a hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard the terrible tidings.
Ah, what an age it is when to speak of tree is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice makes the voice grow harsh.
Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.
~Bertolt Brecht, excerpt from his poem To Posterity
Thumbing through one of my poem anthologies recently, I stumbled upon the classic An Die Nachgeborenen (To Posterity) by Bertolt Brecht. It’s a poem that asks a fundamental question I’ve been grappling with all year: what should we make of joy in a time of darkness and despair?
In a time when headlines read like dirges and hope feels like a fragile thread, joy can seem almost inappropriate. How can one smile when others are grieving? How can laughter exist in a world soaked in sorrow? And yet, it is precisely during these moments of collective despair that joy becomes not just relevant, but revolutionary.
I will stay joyful. Despite, despite, despite.
I’m not just dancing as the house burns. To remain joyful right now is an intentional act of rebellion, a refusal to let despair have the last word.
I know people who have fallen deeply down the hole of despair, far too much of their days devoted to outrage and offense. Their rage demands an audience, forcing their dysregulation on everyone around them. Rather than doing the harder work of processing their frustration and ire so that they can take effective action, they instead rant and rave, stuck in a state of hopelessness. Like Brecht’s lament, their bitterness slowly erases their humanity.
But I will stay joyful. Despite, despite, despite.
There is a profound dichotomy in staying joyful while the world suffers. It can feel dissonant. I’ve been told it’s selfish. But it is not blindness or detachment or naiveté. To embrace joy in dark times is not to deny the darkness, but to declare that the darkness will not consume everything.
To be joyful right now is not willful ignorance either. In fact, the most radiant joy often belongs to those who have seen the deepest pain. It is Victor Frankl writing Man’s Search for Meaning in the aftermath of a concentration camp. It is Van Gogh swirling through indescribable mental anguish. It is Rudolf Nureyev dancing across international borders to escape tyranny. It is a young Malala Yousafzai learning under threat and speaking under fire. It is taking our smallest inconveniences and deepest wounds and channeling them into something lighter. Something that lasts.
We do not need permission to feel joyful, and we do not need to justify it. Our joy does not mean we do not care. It means we care deeply enough to protect the parts of ourselves that are still alive, still human, still whole. In a world of grief, joy is proof that we have not lost ourselves entirely. Despair is loud, but joy is more powerful.
I will stay joyful. Despite, despite, despite.
