Finding joy

This photo is me in February, 2024. I felt happy. My first trade book, Wonderstruck, had just appeared. I had several podcasts lined up, as well as live talks. I had no idea that less than a month later, I would sit in a doctor's office, digesting the news that I had a rare cancer and that it might have spread (which in fact did happen). For many cancers they don't screen for, you only notice symptoms when the disease is spreading and when treatment becomes difficult and invasive.

In the meantime, I've had two major surgeries, several scans, six sessions of chemo (ugh) and seven weeks of radiotherapy. Cancer takes away a lot. But I realized that while my health is a lot, it is not everything. And it's still possible, though hard, to find joy. The book is still published, and I'm still proud of it. I have a loving family. And I have a very supportive community of friends I am thankful for.

Early on, I decided to be open about this illness (while keeping some details private). There's no shame in getting this disease, at a young age like me, or at any age. It just happens. You didn't do anything wrong if you got it (sadly, cancers in young people have been on the rise for a while so I hope to help with my writings those people especially).

We tend to moralize diseases. And so, unsurprisingly, my early emotions were that I had not accomplished enough, and also (not very consistent!) that I was doing too much. I had brought about this disease through stress. Or, I ate too much sugar and induced it that way. You can't believe the number of well-meaning personal messages and emails I received advising me to stop eating sugar.

This all fits into the mindset of individualizing and of productivity. I discovered that I had always been shifting the goalposts for myself in terms of what I needed to do to be “good enough.” Yes, I had a trade book, but I wasn't as impactful as some other philosophers.

A sign from the universe

Struggling with solipsistic thoughts of futility and guilt, one might be tempted to see a life-changing, potentially life-ending disease as a wakeup call. Even if we don't believe in providence or signs from God or the universe, we might still think that cancer should prompt us to turn our life radically around (captured in the very toxic “Cancer is a gift”—no it isn't). But should it?

Just like a diagnosis and treatment doesn't mean the disease now wholly defines your identity, I think that you don't need to personally transform. You are not a repentant who is struck by an angry God. It's tempting to think: Henceforth I will never again eat sugar in my life.** Or you might think, I'll exercise more, or I will make every minute of my life count.

By all means, it's good to be open to your life experiences and make changes in the face of them. But you don't have to. For one thing, making every minute count makes one's life an exhausting exercise. It's okay to waste some time. Thinking you can't is another way to buy into the productivity mindset. But one thing I realized is the importance of joy.

The importance of joy

I'll tell you a story: my grandfather had bladder cancer when he was sixty. It did not look good. As a child, I went to hospital to visit him after major surgery and we were fearing the worst. He smoked cigars, drank liquor, ate butter when everyone else ate margarine, loved big steaks, etc. His doctors advised him to change his diet and his lifestyle.

However, to everyone's surprise he went on pretty much as before. He did stop smoking. But he still ate unhealthily. He would put sugar on strawberries, even sweet ones. He buttered his toast lavishly. He drank his small daily glass of jenever with gusto. He didn't want to compromise. When challenged, he said he wanted to enjoy life, however long it would last. I remember him sleighing down a hill (and unfortunately landing in a hospital, though the injury was minor) age 75, and riding a camel age 80. He died in his early 90s. His cancer never came back. In part, it's up to chance. We cannot control many health outcomes. Being healthy doesn't hurt but enjoyment is also important.

Joy doesn't always come spontaneously. Much like wonder, you have to make space for it in your life (maybe another book I will write will be about joy). It's difficult to have joy when you are in treatment for cancer. It's difficult if you are nauseated or in extreme pain, both feelings I've had these past months a lot. But it's better now—so I make space for joyful things, watching Inspector Morse, reading, listening to great music, drawing, and playing the lute when I can.

Joy as power and virtue

Gilles Deleuze talks about joy in his volumes on Nietzsche and Spinoza, and in this interview.

He draws on Spinoza to say that joy is power. It enables action, and it is virtue.It is intimately tied to self-preservation, so we can say that joy is a form of self-preservation. Or, as Spinoza puts it  "The striving to preserve oneself is the only foundation of virtue" (Ethics, 4p22c).

In joy, you can realize yourself. Activists such as Audre Lorde (see e.g., a Burst of Light) knew that self-care involves making space for self-realizing joy, for instance, expressing yourself through poetry.

As Lorde writes, about her cancer diagnosis,

I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare—Lorde, A Burst of Light, Epilogue.

Yet, if you look on social media you can see a lot of people who are not able to find joy. The threats of political deterioration, the climate crisis, and the lingering pandemic suck the joy out of their lives.

But, as Nietzsche observes in Dawn if you allow this to happen, you also allow people to have power over you. In his view, the morality of customs, introduced by the priest caste (see also his Genealogy of Morals) prompts us to be fearful and gloomy. It makes us buy into a moral system that doesn't benefit us.

How do we overcome this somber mood? By cultivating joy:

Mood as argument. - 'What is the cause of a cheerful resolution for action?' - mankind has been much exercised by this question… When in former times one consulted the oracle over something one proposed to do, what one wanted from it was this feeling of cheerful resolution; and anyone who stood in doubt before several possible courses of action advised himself thus: 'I shall do that which engenders this feeling.'

One thus decided, not for the most reasonable course, but for that course the image of which inspired the soul with hope and courage. The good mood was placed on the scales as an argument and outweighed rationality: it did so because it was interpreted super­stitiously as the effect of a god who promises success and who in this manner gives expression to his reason as the highest rationality. Now consider the consequences of such a prejudice when clever and power-hungry men availed themselves - and continue to avail themselves - of it! 'Create a mood!' - one will then require no reasons and conquer all objections! (Nietzsche, Dawn, 28)

In this rich text, Nietzsche talks about the power of oracles. Oracles work not because they predict the future, but because they make us joyful and confident. They can prompt us to temerity where timidity seems more rational. In this way, we can achieve much more. This is reminiscent of William James's idea that faith can be sometimes self-fulfilling, allowing us to act in ways that don't seem warranted purely by the evidence.

So, we cultivate joy and we have to do so defiantly. It is not easy because it goes against fear—against diagnoses and survival chances over five years, etc. And Nietzsche warns that power-hungry people can use mood to steal our joy, and hence our power to act.

I think I'm doing okay. I don't want this illness to wholly define me or prompt me to turn about my life choices, but I will try to make a bit more space for joy in my life.

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**The sugar hypothesis is based on the fact cancer cells metabolize more sugar, as they grow faster. However, if you cut all sugar from your diet then your body will make sugar because your cells need it. And cancer cells have first dibs on it. My doctor advises me to eat healthily, with more protein to heal from the radiotherapy and surgery, but it's ok to once in a while have something with sugar.