Is it Insensitive to Share Your Joy?

What if you’re having an extraordinary day? The kind where you want to take a photo just to remember it, and when you look at the photo, it’s obvious how you felt. There’s joy on your face. Maybe you’re even glowing a little. Maybe, for a moment, you had this incredible clarity that the world is beautiful. Should you share it?

I’ve asked myself this question before. Should I be so bold as to share a moment when I felt genuinely joyful? What if someone is having a terrible day and sees that photo and thinks I’m rubbing my happiness in their face? What if they’re going through something really hard and my beautiful day makes theirs feel worse?

But what about the opposite? What if someone is having a bad day, sees someone else experiencing real joy and thinks, I can have that too?

When we first started this business, I thought about these things a lot. I was careful about what I put out into the world because I never wanted our message to be that life is always beautiful, or that everyone can simply pack a bag and go somewhere. Life is hard sometimes. Really hard.

But I’ve come to believe that the more evidence there is of people experiencing moments of joy, the better. More evidence of people having fun, taking care of themselves, stepping away for a minute, doing something they’ve always wanted to do, trying something that scares them a little, or sitting around a table with people they didn’t know a few days earlier and laughing until their stomach hurts.

Because joy is contagious. Negativity is too. Ask me how I know. If I let negativity rule my day (which I did for several years), it doesn’t stay neatly contained inside me. My partner feels it. My kids feel it. Work feels harder. But the reverse is true too. You smile at the person making your morning coffee and maybe that interaction carries into the next one. You go away for a few days and come home feeling rested, confident or excited about your life again, and the people around you experience a different version of you.

These things sound small, but I don’t think they are.

I’ve watched people leave our retreats saying, “I never would have done that on my own.” I’ve heard someone say their family noticed something different about them when they got home. I’ve watched someone do something that scared them and realize, Oh. I can do hard things! My own partner noticed a shift in how I approached each day after I went to Portugal and participated in a retreat there (my neighbors noticed, too).

Those are the needle movers. Not necessarily the giant, life-changing moments, but the little shifts that change how we move through an ordinary Tuesday. And then another Tuesday. And eventually, maybe, a life.

That’s why I don’t feel bad anymore about putting beautiful experiences into the world. Yes, there are beautiful views and incredible food. There is laughter, camaraderie and adventure. But underneath all of that is the chance to discover one little thing inside yourself that lights you up, and then take it home with you.

I look back at photos of myself toward the end of a retreat sometimes and I look like I’m floating in the clouds. Am I like that all the time? Absolutely not. But I’ve felt it. And having that feeling, even for a few moments or hours or days, propels me forward.

So yes, I’m going to share the photo. I’m going to keep putting evidence of joy into the world and creating places where people can find a little more of it for themselves. Because I don’t think we need to apologize for joy. I think we need to spread it.

See Current Retreats

Travel With Intention, Without Overthinking It

The Back Injury That Changed Everything

Why Reading Retreats Are Becoming So Popular