Overview of How to Get Your Joy Back: Ross Gay
In this best-of conversation from We Can Do Hard Things, Glennon Doyle and Ross Gay explore joy as a serious, embodied practice—not escapism, optimism, or denial. Ross argues that joy is evidence of connection: a way of noticing that we belong to one another, to the world, and to life itself, even amid grief, violence, and uncertainty. The episode moves through delight, caregiving, vulnerability, laughter, crying, community, and the ongoing work of “unknowing” the people we love so we can keep seeing them freshly.
Core Ideas About Joy
Joy is connection, not avoidance
- Ross defines joy as the practice of entanglement—actively participating in connection with people, trees, gardens, games, and community.
- He rejects the idea that joy is apolitical or unserious.
- Joy is not a break from struggle; it’s what helps us stay human and keep fighting for what matters.
Joy is bigger than resistance
- Ross pushes back on the phrase “joy as resistance.”
- His point: joy isn’t only a response to oppression; it is the truth we’re trying to protect.
- What threatens joy is the lie that we are separate, isolated, or only defined by institutions and systems.
We belong to each other
- He emphasizes that being a creature means being connected and needing others.
- The idea that we are self-contained and independent is, in his view, a brutal illusion.
- Love, care, and belonging are practiced—not assumed.
Delight as a Daily Practice
The origin of The Book of Delights
- Ross describes starting the project while in Italy, having a beautiful day and deciding to write a short essay about something delightful each day for a year.
- He imposed simple constraints: write quickly, by hand, daily.
- The project became a discipline of attention, not just a literary exercise.
Why delight matters
- Delight keeps the “joy muscle” from atrophying under stress, grief, and doomscrolling.
- Ross argues that the more you study delights, the more delights you find.
- Noticing delight is a way of re-entering life.
Delight is communal
- Witnessing someone else’s delight can heighten your own.
- Joy becomes more powerful when it’s shared: “Yo!” moments, shared texts, pictures, or experiences deepen the feeling.
- The episode highlights how delight spreads through relationships.
Community, Care, and the Power of Sharing
Radical care happens outside institutions
- Ross describes a worldview where care is often falsely imagined as something administered by systems.
- In reality, people care for each other constantly in ordinary, fleeting ways:
- sharing seeds
- carrying something for a stranger
- naming a tree
- showing up in small acts of attention
- These micro-moments are the fabric of communal life.
Sharing is an act of joy
- Joy is tied to sharing what we love.
- Sharing is also a challenge to consumerism and scarcity thinking.
- Caring directly for one another is often treated as disruptive because it bypasses systems that want to control care.
Community Orchard, Gardening, and the Ethics of Openness
The Bloomington Community Orchard
- Ross tells the story of a community orchard project started by his neighbor Amy Countryman.
- The orchard was created as a food justice project: free fruit for all.
- It involved a huge amount of labor, long meetings, potlucks, and collective problem-solving.
The fence question
- One key debate was whether to put a lock on the gate.
- The group chose openness, even though it risked loss or misuse.
- Ross’s point: locking the gate would have been a bigger loss than any fruit or tree stolen.
- The orchard embodies the idea that openness and trust are worth the risk.
A model for how to live
- The orchard is a metaphor for human communities:
- open gates over protected perfection
- shared abundance over hoarding
- “busted upness” over rigid control
- Ross connects this to churches, institutions, and any system that protects itself instead of giving itself away.
Vulnerability, Crying, and Laughter
Crying as a forbidden kind of truth
- Ross reflects on being shamed by a coach and realizing decades later that what he had been avoiding was crying.
- He links the fear of crying to the fear of exposing need and frailty.
- For him, masculinity training taught him to “hold it together” and hide the fact that he was a creature with needs.
Laughter is policed too
- Ross notes that laughter can be subversive because it is contagious and connective.
- Laughter reminds us of shared breath—and shared mortality.
- The episode frames laughter as freedom: something that can’t be fully controlled.
Changing Relationships and “Unknowing” People
Learning to see loved ones anew
- Ross discusses how we often think we know people completely, especially partners, parents, and close friends.
- He argues that intimacy requires ongoing unknowing: staying open to who someone is becoming.
- Love means being willing to re-meet people over and over again.
Change can feel like disintegration
- When a loved one changes, it can feel destabilizing because we’ve built a version of ourselves around them.
- Ross describes this as a kind of unmaking and reconstitution—of the self and the relationship.
- The real work of love is to stay present through that change.
Practical Takeaways
Ways to rebuild your delight muscle
- Notice one thing each day that delights you.
- Share delight with someone else.
- Make delight communal: send a photo, text, or voice note.
- Practice seeing familiar people, places, and relationships with beginner’s mind.
A few Ross Gay-style prompts
- What is beautiful right now, even if everything feels on fire?
- Where is connection already happening?
- What can I share instead of hoard?
- Who am I refusing to re-see?
- Where am I trying to protect myself from being a creature?
Memorable Takeaway
Ross’s central message is that joy is not shallow, naive, or escapist. It is a serious practice of belonging. Joy helps us remember that we are connected, that care is already happening among us, and that the world is worth staying in relationship with—even in its brokenness.