Joy as Defiance

We are trained to defer joy. To earn it. To wait for it. To tie it to the next grant, the next milestone, the next proof that we deserve a moment of peace. In this episode, Lisa talks about what happens when you stop waiting — and why choosing to feel good in a world that profits from your striving is the most radical thing you can do. This is not about positivity. This is about freedom.

Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out.

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Not role to role. Soul to soul.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to Soul to Soul with Lisa Carter Boba, where science meets soul. Hey, welcome back to Soul to Soul. I'm Dr. Lisa Carterbawa, and today I want to talk about joy. Not happiness, not positivity, not the version of joy that comes with a gratitude journal and a morning routine and a list of affirmations taped to your bathroom mirror. I want to talk about the real thing, the dangerous thing, the version of joy that the world doesn't quite know what to do with, because it doesn't perform, it doesn't explain itself, and it refuses to wait for permission. I want to talk about joy as defiance. And I want to start with a confession. I have not always been a joyful person. I have been a productive person, I've been a disciplined person, I've been the person who gets things done, who shows up, who delivers, who earns the thing and then immediately starts earning the next thing. And for a long time I thought that was the same as joy. I thought if I built enough, accomplished enough, proved enough, joy would arrive, like a package, like something I had ordered a long time ago that was finally being delivered. It did not. What arrived instead was a very accomplished life that I was too exhausted to enjoy. And I think a lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Here's what I've come to understand. And I didn't understand this until recently. I didn't understand it in my 20s, I didn't understand it in my 30s, I barely understood it in my 40s. I am understanding it now in real time, and I'm gonna share it with you while it's still raw. We are trained, especially women, especially high-achieving women, especially women in academic medicine, in research, and spaces where you're always being evaluated, we are trained to defer joy, not reject it, defer it. We say things like, when I get the grant, then I'll relax. When I finish the paper, then I'll take a breath. When I get tenure, then I'll enjoy this. When the kids are older, when the project wraps, when the season changes. And what we're really saying underneath all of that is I have not yet earned the right to feel good. Let that land for a second. We have tied our permission to experience joy to our productivity, to our output, to our usefulness, and the result is a life that looks extraordinary from the outside and feels like a treadmill from the inside. Because the finish line keeps moving. It was designed to keep moving. The system doesn't want you to arrive, it wants you to keep running. I'm gonna say something that might be uncomfortable. For a long time, and I mean years, I was suspicious of my own joy. When something good happened, my first instinct was not to celebrate it. My first instinct was to scan for what could go wrong next. When I had a good day, a genuinely good day, there was a voice in the back of my mind that said, don't get comfortable, this doesn't last, something is coming. And I want to be honest about where that voice came from. It didn't come from nowhere. It came from experience. When you've been through hard things, real hard things, not theoretical ones, your nervous system learns to protect you. It learns that joy is dangerous because joy means you have something to lose. And losing things hurts. So the safest thing, the most rational thing your body decides is to never fully relax into the good. You hold back, you hedge, you enjoy things at maybe 70%, and you tell yourself that's just being realistic, that's just being smart, that's just being prepared. But here's the truth, and this is the truth I've been circling for a long time, and I'm finally ready to say it out loud. That is not wisdom. That is fear wearing wisdom's clothes. So what is joy then? If it's not the reward for hard work, if it's not the absence of pain, if it's not something you earn or achieve or arrive at, what is it? I've been sitting with this question, and the answer I keep coming back to is one that surprises me every time. Joy is a decision you make in the presence of every reason not to. Let me say that again. Joy is a decision you make in the presence of every reason not to. It is not the absence of darkness, it is not the other side of grief, it is not what happens when everything is finally okay. Joy is what you choose when things are hard and uncertain and imperfect, and you choose it anyway. Not because you're ignoring reality, because you're refusing to let reality have the last word. That's why I call it defiance. Because in a world that profits from your anxiety, in a world that is designed to keep you striving, comparing, producing, optimizing, choosing to feel good without a reason is a radical act. Choosing to laugh on a Tuesday for no reason is a radical act. Choosing to put the laptop down and sit on your porch and watch the sky change colors and feel, actually feel that this moment is enough. That is the most defiant thing you can do. I want to tell you what joy is defiance looks like in practice, in my actual life, not a curated version. It looks like dancing in my kitchen alone to a song that has no business making me that happy, and not recording it, not posting it, not turning it into content, just dancing for me, because my body wanted to move and I let it. It looks like saying no to something I could do, something I'm capable of doing, something that would look impressive on paper, because the cost of doing it is a week of my peace, and choosing peace, choosing it even when ambition says I should choose the other thing. It looks like calling someone I love and saying, I just wanted to hear your voice and not having an agenda. It looks like forgiving myself for the days I didn't feel joyful, because joy as defiance doesn't mean joy every minute. It means refusing to believe that the dark minutes defined you. Now I want to talk to you because I know who's listening. You are the woman who holds everything together. You're the one people describe as strong. You're the one who sends the email at midnight and shows up at seven looking like you slept eight hours. You're the one who carries other people's stress alongside your own and calls it leadership. And somewhere underneath all of that holding, there is a version of you that is exhausted. Not the kind of exhausted that sleep fixes, the kind of exhausted that comes from performing a life instead of living one. I know her. I've been her. Some days I still am her. And what I want to say to that version of you, the one who is listening right now, maybe in her car, maybe on a walk, maybe lying in bed at the end of another long day, is this. You are allowed to feel good. You don't have to earn it first. You don't have to finish the task first. You don't have to lose the weight or get the promotion or fix the relationship or clear the inbox or prove to anyone that you deserve a moment of pleasure on this earth. You are allowed to feel good right now. In this body, in this life, with all of its mess and incompleteness and unresolved chapters. Joy is not a reward. Joy is a birthright, and every system that taught you otherwise was protecting itself, not you. I use the word defiance deliberately, because I want to name what we are pushing against. We're pushing against a culture that equates suffering with seriousness, that says if you're laughing, you must not be paying attention. That says if you're enjoying yourself, you must not be working hard enough. That looks at a black woman in leadership who is visibly joyful and thinks she must not understand the gravity of the situation. Oh, I understand the gravity. I understand it in my bones. I've sat in rooms where I was the only one. I've written grants that were rejected. I have underestimated and overlooked and second-guessed. I understand the gravity. And I have decided, decided that the gravity does not get to take my joy. It can take my time, it can take my energy, it can take my patience on a bad day, but it does not give my joy. That is mine. I am keeping it and I am not apologizing for it. That is defiance. When you choose joy in a world that expects your suffering, when you choose lightness in a room that rewards heaviness, when you choose to celebrate yourself without waiting for someone else to celebrate you first, you are not being naive. You are being free. And freedom, real freedom, the kind that lives in your body and not just your mind, terrifies every system that depends on your compliance. I want to get quiet for a moment because I think some of you are sitting with something right now, something you haven't said out loud, and it might sound like this. I don't remember the last time I felt joyful. Not happy, not fine, joyful. Or it might sound like this. I feel guilty when I feel good, like I haven't done enough to deserve it. Or maybe even this. I'm afraid that if I let myself feel joy, something will take it away. I hear you. I've lived in every one of those sentences, and I'm not going to tell you to let them go because they don't leave on command. They leave when something truer takes its place. So here's what's truer. You did not come here to this life, to this work, to this body to endure. You came here to live. And living, real living, the kind that lights you up from the inside, requires joy. Not as a luxury, as a necessity, as fuel, as the thing that keeps you human in systems that would prefer you to be a machine. Joy is not frivolous. Joy is how you survive without losing yourself. So here's my invitation, and I don't give this lightly because I know what it costs. This week, just this week, I want you to practice joy as defiance, not as performance, not as a social media post, not as proof to anyone that you're okay. I want you to find one moment, it can be small and it should be small, where you choose to feel good on purpose, where you let the laugh happen without checking if it's appropriate, where you let the compliment land without deflecting it, where you sit in silence and notice that your heart is beating and your lungs are working and you are here alive on a planet that is turning, and that is, by any honest measure, miraculous. And when that voice shows up, the one that says, Don't get comfortable, I want you to say gently, the way you would talk to someone you love. I hear you, I know you're trying to protect me, but I am choosing this. I am choosing joy. Not because everything is perfect, because I am still here, and that is enough reason. That is defiance, that is freedom, and that is soul to soul. Thank you for being here. I'll see you next week.