Each day, I religiously scroll through my Facebook memories. With well over a decade of posts on there, it often surprises me how I live life in patterns. In the midst of everyday living – school opening, mid school year blues, fall festivities, end of year festivities, there are these posts about the pandemic, school board negotiations on wearing or not wearing a mask and, elections.
All August, I have been seeing my old posts full of joy from when Harris announced her decision to run and her picking Walz as her VP. The happiness in those posts is infectious. Most days, I write something on my wall just so a decade from now, I can see what it was like when despair was the norm. Since the beginning of this year, I have gone from outraging over things I knew and predicted would happen to going silent on everything around me. I have disconnected, disengaged and devolved.
My social media is a mix of people imploring others to resist, to show up and fight, to go on a general strike. I read and scroll. My angst peaked in the run up to the elections. Now, I am mentally in a place where I am content to watch the world burn down. We deserve this.
Then, in the midst of all of it, my morning today started with orange confetti on screen. My feed was full of orange sparkles and joy. After a long time, I felt that ballooning hope and an irrepressible joy. All over the announcement of an album without a launch date. All we had was the color scheme and an album title.
It was enough. On a day when the militarization of this nations capital was weighing heavy on me, this flooding of my timeline in orange glitter felt symbolic and hopeful. Symbolic in the way of reclaiming a color that had been tainted. Hopeful in the way of resistance.
If the powers that be subject us to a constant barrage of decisions designed to make us outrage, cower and fear. Joy is the antidote. By refusing to give in to despair and darkness, we exist. Our existence in itself is resistance. Joy is anathema to whatever is happening in America. In finding our pockets of sunshine, in finding a moment to take in the gloriousness of the full moon. In relishing a piece of finely written work. In sharing cat memes. In giving into the timelessness of music, we thrive. When we thrive, we resist.
So, for those wondering why a Swift album almost feels like resistance, it is because it is. By sucking oxygen away from the madness this admin is perpetuating, in reclaiming the color orange as a symbol of joy, in allowing people to feel a sense of community and ignore the darkness that threatens to pervade our space, we are all resisting. We are all fighting. We are all thriving.
It is the politics of joy.
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