protecting your joy

Joy and kindness are two precious gifts to encounter and possess in life. They are also like gold to energy thieves, vampires and succubi who aim to rob you of your happiness and make you regret showing even the most basic forms of kindness. So how do you protect your inner joy and good nature in the face of such negative individuals?

You must either be incredibly resilient and immune to their derogatory words (hard to do for some) or you must pick and choose who to share your joy and kindness with. For some time, I struggled with the latter. My base nature is to be extremely kind and compassionate to all people, however I quickly realized that this left me open to attack from hateful and mentally damaged individuals who wanted to bring me down with them. The solution that worked best for me initially was to simply not express the true depths of my joy for life. I don’t talk about how great my schooling is going, how much I love some new gadget I just ordered or my general contentment with my life. That is, unless I have spent enough time with someone to know that they are one of the rare, genuinely good hearted individuals that doesn’t gossip, hate or spread negative/belittling energy.

This means that I often get jokes from new people I meet about being too “boring” or get probing questions from people trying to figure out what’s “really” going on. Initially, I heard them and let these comments pass, for such people I was like a cement bunker covered with 1 foot of dirt. It didn’t take much digging before they realize that they weren’t getting in…Now I take a much more aggressive stance, aggressive in protecting my peace that is. I confront these people directly and tell them that their desire to instigate or find negativity in me shows a deeper lack within themselves. I either directly say this or imply this.

Here is an example based off a real conversation I had one day at work: “Why are you so happy, haven’t you realized we are in hell…” my response: “It’s not your business to regulate or diminish my inner joy. Your emotions have zero effect on me, as mine should have on you. If that isn’t the case in your mind, you should probably go figure out why you’re so obsessed with a stranger’s happiness”. She rarely spoke to me after this 🙌🏾.

This is especially important for me as a young, dark skinned African woman in America, where for some reason, so many people are heavily invested in the idea that I should hate my natural hair, skin color and basically everything about myself. I actually do get a kick out of it when misguided individuals try this out on me and fail mid-flight lol. Like yeah, no you got the right one lil’buddy. I know my history, culture, heritage and the value of who I am. Darkness is a scary word for you, not me.

That being said, to all my dark-skinned brothers & sisters out there, please learn to protect your joy and be resillient in whatever way works best for you. Lord knows that there are some major h8rz out there looking for a victim. Fortunately, I was able to work my way up from sharing less information to just boldly retorting to their vim with verve.