Name your sources.

Where does your joy come from?
How do you protect it?
Do you have a regular connection to it?
Can you access it easily?

I’m not talking about fleeting pleasures or the thrill of short-lived excitement. I mean the kind of joy that’s deeply rooted, built on appreciation, awareness, and inner satisfaction.

It’s not necessarily easy in this crazy world, but it’s something I’ve been practicing.

I’ve been (slowly) making my way through Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. It’s dense, written in 1964, and mostly refers to television, but it’s extremely relevant now. Every page feels like it’s talking about social media and AI.

Even just a quarter of the way in, I’m stunned by how accurately he describes media hijacking our minds, our nervous systems, and even our beliefs. He warned about a world where we’re constantly stimulated and disconnected from ourselves. Sound familiar?

I don’t need to tell you what it feels like to carry the weight of the world.
You know the constant flood of news, opinions, injustice, and despair.
We all know.

And while media can connect us across borders, experiences, and causes, its side effects are bigger than we often acknowledge.

I'm not suggesting we bury our heads in the sand.
But I am asking if you can tune it out for a moment?
Can you shut it off long enough to reconnect with yourself?

Can you feel joy instead of doom?

Do you know your own values, not the ones you absorbed by default, but the ones you chose?
Can you slow down long enough to hear yourself think, without the crowd?
Can you let joy in even while the world is on fire?

I’ve struggled with this, too. I’ve let global stress hijack beautiful moments. I’ve numbed joy because others are suffering. I’ve scrolled through 25 posts about the world ending and then taken it out on my day and my people.

And yet… when I disconnect, even briefly, and step into the quiet of my own body, my own heart, my own shadows, something shifts.

I remember how to feel again.
I remember how to see beauty, even here.
I remember what is good, right now.

We don’t need permission to protect our joy.
We just need to practice choosing it, again and again.

And maybe the real rebellion is that:
To feel deeply,
to disconnect from the noise,
and to build your life from the inside out.

🖤t