THE GUILT OF JOY
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THE GRACE OF SILLINESS In a world where bad things happen every day, what right do we have to be joyful? Story and Photo by: Kierstin Richter, Editor “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities WHEN I WAS twenty-two, on a chilly October night, I sat with a margarita in one hand and an existential crisis in the other. One of my best friends sat in a distant haze and met my eyes with a hint of quiet, confused sadness. I asked if he was okay. “I’m just having a bad night,” he muttered. When I asked him why, he unexpectedly spiraled into a heated monologue about global issues and displacement of the poor due to violence or climate issues and collateral damage in the Middle East. I didn’t know how to respond because my biggest issue to think about that night was simply whether or not I was going to talk to the cute guy by the stage. (I didn’t.) But alas, he sat stewing in anguish over the disturbing reality of our world and his particular, present position in a place where he was safe from it all, but guilty of feeling any sort of joy when he felt he didn’t deserve to. What I always admired about him was his invaluable sense of the need to change the world 10 THE CATHOLIC CONNECTION
around him - to make the world a better place. He had the capacity of a political think tank, and he ruminated over social issues way more than any twenty-two year old should, concerned with global conflict, knee-deep in political issues over eighty percent of the time, and it consumed him entirely. He was paralyzed by analysis. “It’s not like I can take my eyes off of it,” he said. “How can you ignore it all when the world is literally on fire?” “Well, do you have any control over any of it?” I asked him. “No,” he said. “But it’s kind of my moral responsibility to worry, right? What right do I have to be happy when the world is full of violence and injustice both here and across the world? There are people down the street starving or addicted to drugs, and this is how I’m spending my Tuesday night?” I wasn’t entirely sure what to say, one, because he was totally killing my vibe, and I just wanted to dance, and two, because I didn’t exactly know either. It wasn’t exactly something I thought about all the time. Did we have the right to be enjoying ourselves here at a meaningless Halloween party? When so many bad things are happening all around us, can we rightfully be happy at all? Is that like rubbing our happiness in other people’s faces? Like we’d offend them? Shouldn’t we be prioritizing our time to helping
