Donuts and Joy

If you’ve been alive and awake for the past week, you’ve been witness to a bad situation get notably worse in real time. Hell, if you were alive this year you have been privy to an increasing disastrous cacophony that seems to have no end in sight.

2015 vs 2020. Signs of the times.

There is A LOT of work to be done. Humans have spent the better chunk of three centuries breaking this planet down, and it seems that we are now faced with a need for active, radical maintenance. While a lot of the work is infrastructural, there is a huge amount to do regarding our general humanity. I believe there needs to be a genuine effort to reconsider the human experience, and how we interact with each other in a markedly different way than we have been.

Scientifically, I have learned that work requires energy. Also, literally in doing physical labor I recognize that work requires energy. This is not all going to be physical labor — I’m inclined to think a lot of it will be mental and emotional processes. Moreover, I think a lot of that mental and emotional work is going to require nuance and focus. All in all, I expect it to be incredibly draining of my own resources, and I expect my story to be fairly ubiquitous.

In anticipation of this exhaustion, I wanted to give some mindful attention to joy.

First, I want to redefine joy a bit. I find that joy is most often conflated with happiness, but in my memory that doesn’t do it full service. I have had joyful mourning, and joyful disgust. I think (at least for myself) joy is an exuberant expression of a base emotion. And I wonder how best to anticipate my need for joy as an emotional resource in the coming times.

My mind goes to donuts.

It’s maybe a secret, and perhaps a stranger wouldn’t guess these days, but I love donuts. Beyond the idea of “donuts are a sweet pastry, what’s not to love.” They’re not just a sweet pastry. I’m never going to debate between croissants and donuts, or scones and donuts. Donuts are NOT just a sweet pastry.

Donuts are exuberant and joyful for me. They are joy.

Picking just one picture of donuts was so difficult.

Look at these donuts. Consider even just the aesthetic joy of donuts. The color, the luster, the texture, the shape and size. A donut case is a veritable menagerie of delight, in which there’s no wrong choice. Sophie would be flabbergasted. I feel similarly in this regard to candy, but there’s a difference between candy and donuts for me.

Donuts have a life to them. Even non-yeasted donuts have an airy life to them that separates them from the saccharine wonders of a candy store. And it’s that scratch beyond the aesthetics. Candy is definitely a huge dimension of flavors and textures and colors, but somehow donuts feel more human. It’s something in the shape and size. The intention of donut design is a tactile experience that requires human interaction. The classic donut shape with hole — it’s a food with its own handle. And you’re supposed to act WITH the donut. It’s not a fistful of jellybeans you shovel into your maw indiscriminately.

It’s a human prop, and it accentuates the human hand.

It really is such a unique human experience. Because we have other “handled” foods, like carrot sticks or bananas or chicken wings. But those aren’t aesthetically joyful like donuts. We have other vivid and bright foods — candy, fruit, cookies. Those don’t have the intentional design that makes donuts such an expressive tactile moment for humans. We have other sweet and savory delights, like bagels or cinnamon buns. But I’ve yet to find class of foods that bests the marvelous confluence of joy that is a donut.

Donuts are joy, for me. And no, they’re not going to fix this. They’re not going to be physically healthy for me. But in being a resource of joy they will be emotionally necessary for me.

So I’m going to have donuts when I need joy. Because I will need joy.

Donuts also have a shockingly American history, and have been argued to be a symbol of democratic pursuits. Google it.

We will need joy.

I urge you to consider and find your sources of joy. Even if they do not look like happiness.

I think about the joy of sad music when I am sad. Melodies and words that elevate my sadness in joy of being known and not alone. I am sad. I am frustrated, and hurt, and broken perhaps. There is joy in sad songs because I am reminded, emotionally and wantonly that I am human in those moments.

I think about the joy of breaking. Another small fact of mine is that I love origami. There’s a different joy in the process of focus and execution of a perfectly folded facsimile. Then, there’s the resplendent joy in rage and destruction as I crumple my work. This is the same cathartic and necessary process we’re seeing with the non-violent destruction of property. This is a joyful deconstruction of oppressive capitalism; there is exuberance in this rage and destruction.

Anger, rage, and frustration need genuine and joyful outlets. Property can always be replaced.

I urge you to find moments, and joy, like these. To appreciate the humanity of them, and the necessary exuberance in these actions.

If it works for you, I urge you to have a donut.

Know your joy. Find your joy. Indulge in your joy.

We will need joy for this work, and it is time to work.

So, it is also time for joy.

Joyfully Not Yours,

August