You can’t steal my joy

Jokes on you, Joanne

Mar 06, 2025

“Am I going to need to separate you guys?” Said every teacher I’ve ever had as they looked at me and my friends having a hair too much fun in whatever stale classroom we were sitting in at that very moment.

Yeah Linda, I guess if you hate joy you might have to make a new seating chart. So they did, many times. Once, in 6th grade French class, the new seating chart came out and I was assigned the exact same desk I previously had, this time with nobody next to me. It was in the back of the classroom next to the water fountain. Jokes on you, Madame! I love water. We ended up bringing a remote control car to class that semester just to pass notes on. Ah, the good ol’ days.

From middle school French to high school history to extracurricular classes as an adult and everything in between, anytime I hear those fateful words it feels like a jab to the heart. People love to tell you “Life’s too short, enjoy every minute” and then punish you the second you do. I don’t know if it’s because you’re having more fun than they’re even capable of, or because they’re jealous of your ability to tap into joy in the mundane moments of life, but whatever it is, I believe it’s a projection of their own ability to access joy and levity.

And sure, maybe sometimes these comments were warranted because we were a distraction to the class, but most of the time my friends and I were just minding our own business and having fun while doing it. Apparently a crime.

Unfortunately, these moments aren’t exclusive to the childhood classroom. My very first memory was in preschool. I was outside and I saw a cute boy about 10-months old (LOL writing this sentence feels insane). He was on the other side of a wire fence, his arms being held up by one of the teachers. I walked up to him and pinched his cheeks. I guess infant media in the early 90s taught me that’s what you do when you think someone is cute. I was put in a timeout for 20 minutes. I was two. Before I could even spell my own name, the world was teaching me that my expressions of delight needed to be contained, controlled, and corrected.

When I was in college, I started a new job as a hostess at the restaurant of local golf club. That’s where I met one of my very best friends (Hi Maddie!). We had so much fun working behind the podium. We worked well together, because we had a blast while doing it. The managers hated that. We were very professional, in my humble opinion—unlike middle school, we were not a distraction. We just both happened to have a joyful approach to life, which made every shift something to look forward to. On slow days, when our only job was to stand guard in case someone desperate enough for an eggs benedict at 10am on a Tuesday came in, we’d entertain ourselves. We once made a list of 100 wonderful things about life that have nothing to do with age—we wanted to carry this joy into the future, regardless of if time and ability slowed us down. I still have that list.

I remember one day our least favorite manager was working, and she was not keen on the genuine smiles we had on our faces. So she came down the stairs with two brown sharpies and asked us to go around the entire lobby and fill in any scratches on the wood. It seemed like it was intended as a punishment, but we still had fun. Jokes on you, Joanne. Art?! At work! We’re in.

Another time, I was at a concert at The Riviera in Chicago. We arrived early, and an employee told us the front row of the balcony is the best seat, so that’s where we headed. The opener, Mallrat, came on and I knew every word because I had been following her for years. Nobody else seemed to know who she was, or to care at all that she was playing. So I was singing and dancing on my own, enjoying myself, when a group of girls behind me kept yelling at me to sit down. When I didn’t, they got an employee involved and he told us we needed to sit or leave. So we left. On our way out, we found a different employee and asked if standing wasn’t allowed on the balcony. He stared at us with the most insane look on his face and said, “This is a rock concert, nobody should be sitting.” He escorted us back to where we were—the best seats in the house—and told the other employee not to bug us. So we kept singing and dancing, and that was when I got a cup of ice from someone’s empty drink thrown at my head.

The world has a thousand subtle ways to tell you your joy is inconvenient, out of place, or uncomfortable. They want you to be less. To be tame. To be invisible. To stay in your own lane. To never disrupt other people’s expectations of you. But what about your own expectations of yourself? I will not stop running toward the things that bring joy to my heart, regardless of how it makes teachers or managers or insecure people around me feel. After all, “Blythe” means joyful. I have a name to live up to!

I’m reading The Alchemist for the first time, and came across this passage this morning:

“When I'm eating, that's all I think about. If I'm on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other because I don't live in either my past or my future—I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now.”

All these examples I’ve shared are a result of simply enjoying the moments for what they are. Taking the opportunities to connect and laugh with people when they are given to us, because we never know when they will no longer be possible. My favorite hobby will always be laughing so hard until I pee my pants. Sue me! Fire me! Throw ice at me! I simply do not care, I will not stop enjoying the fact that we’re all spinning around on a rock with no real idea what comes next. The least we can do is make the most of every moment.