Thief of Joy

Life is not a rehearsal, nor a penitentiary sentence, but the one candle handed to you in a wind-torn corridor, and joy is not the infantile refusal to notice the graveyard at the edge of town. Joy is, rather, the soul’s lucid rebellion against becoming a mausoleum before it has died. There are people who come softly, carrying concern in a black valise, disappointment folded neatly into a handkerchief. They call themselves realistic. They call themselves honest. They say they are only trying to help.

And perhaps, once in a while, they are.

But one learns, with the unhappy education of years, that there are those for whom another person’s brightness is an insult. Your laughter troubles the architecture of their grievance. Your hope reveals the stale air in which they have made a home. Your pleasure, especially if it is innocent, uncomplicated, unpurchased by suffering, appears to them almost indecent. They do not know how to behold a happy person without trying to put a coat over him, preferably gray, preferably damp. These are the thieves of joy. They do not always steal with cruelty. Some steal by ridicule. Some by endless correction. Some by making every delight answer for itself before a tribunal of cynicism. You mention a song you love, and they explain why it is shallow. You arrive with a flower, and they begin discussing pollen allergies, funerals, inflation, and whether the vase is truly clean. By the time they leave, the flower is still there, but you are no longer certain it was beautiful. That is theft.

One must be careful with the word *entitled*, because it has been dragged through so many ugly rooms. Yet there is a clean and noble entitlement: the entitlement to one’s own aliveness. You are entitled to protect the conditions under which your spirit can remain awake. You are entitled to decline invitations that leave you diminished. You are entitled to step away from conversations that turn your inner world into a public utility, available for sabotage. You are entitled to stop presenting your tenderest aspirations before people who have made a career of smirking at tenderness. You are entitled to be selective about who receives the unguarded version of you.