I wouldn’t categorize myself as a happy person. I have a pretty dark outlook on the whole fate of the world and British humor slides into home for me most of the time. There’s been a lot of pain in my life for me to just bluntly accept that life is sunshine.

But I would say I am an incredibly joyful person. I think it’s a symptom of feeling every emotion very deeply within me. When I’m sad, I’m devastatingly so. When I’m anxious, there’s usually a panic attack headed to a theatre near you. When something makes me laugh, I laugh hard with no abandon.

Joy for me is taking a delight in the moment and savoring it. I find joy in making my pour-over coffee, in a stranger smiling genuinely at me in the store, at a really well done joke or one liner. It’s a spark of pure appreciation for the world around me.

There are so many things that are wrong with this world. There are political and cultural battles to be fought. There are wrongs to right and injustices to be brought to light. I hope that we are all the kinds of people that are aware of those things and fight for people.

But I also know that we can’t make it on the mission alone. There’s too much life that falls out of the purview of our latest cause. So in the moments when you can, I hope you’ll choose joy. It doesn’t make you a hypocrite to both know of suffering and celebrate little victories. It makes you a whole person. Whole people are the ones that change the world.