What does joy mean to me? I had to sit with this question a long time.

I’d always fancied myself a serious person – one who looked at the reality of the world and did not look away.

I felt the heaviness of my relative privilege and the responsibility of bearing witness to other people’s stories.

I thought I was doing the right thing.But deep inside me, I felt a small shift. A flutter.

And so I thought about that.

I’ve always been more comfortable with the inside of my head than the inside of my body. I intellectualise everything. I think before I talk. I push down my feelings to get to a so-called rational response. And when I’m stressed, I tend to get caught in a cycle of negative thinking.

I thought about that too.

What would it mean to fully inhabit my body?

Joy is the justice we give ourselves.

I heard this line of poetry for the first time at a writing workshop and it has stayed with me ever since. For me, it was a revelation.

Perhaps for the first time, I started to consider the possibility that joy was not a luxury item but a fundamental human right.

Joy is available to us, every day, if we reach out and grab it.

This kind of joy has to be felt in the body, in pores, sinews, rushing blood, strong bones. It is deeply healing.

I started wondering how I could grab this joy.

The line from the poem became my mantra, and yet I found myself misremembering it as: joy is the justice we deny ourselves.

In The Artist’s Way, creative teacher and scriptwriter Julia Cameron talks about her own mantra: “Treating myself as a precious object will make me strong.”

She says our inner artists are children who must be cherished and cossetted, and she says we’re often so much meaner to ourselves than to anyone else.

When I read that, I felt a start of recognition. I thought about all the ways I routinely denied myself things I really wanted, rationalising that they were “too expensive” or “not necessary”. Like nice hand soap, or a bag of muesli rusks.

Or new pyjamas to replace the worn out pair I’ve had for years.

Cameron says when we deliberately, and routinely, deny ourselves these small pleasures, we are actually turning our backs on our own creativity.

I’m claiming 2025 as my year of joyful movement.

That’s a big deal for someone whose happy place is to be curled up in bed with a good book.

Sure, I’d love to be an Iron Woman, bench-pressing my bodyweight while rescuing a kitten and volunteering for the fire brigade, but all of that just sounds so, well, exhausting.

That’s not what joyful movement is for me. It’s about loving the way my body feels in the moment. It’s moving in nature, feeling energised rather than wiped out, having fun, playing with new types of movement.

For me, it’s also about exercise snacking — doing a 10-or-15-minute yoga or pilates workout when I need a work break.

And it’s better for the people around me. I’m more patient, empathetic, creative, and, yes, productive, when I’ve had my movement snack.

When bad things happen — as they always will — I’m more resilient.

The writer Jung Chang, recalling her neighbours’ friendliness during the Cultural Revolution in China, said “When people are happy they become kind.”

I am kinder when I am happy.

Joy is the paradise we can claim right here, right now

For my birthday this year I waded chest deep into an icy tidal pool. I had to push myself to keep on going, deeper and deeper. In the middle of the pool, blue surrounded me. I pushed out my arms into breaststroke.

Then I rolled over onto my back and looked at the sky. I wasn’t cold anymore – I was euphoric.

Joy is the sunrise breaking through night’s remains…

Initially, I was resistant to the idea of actively seeking out joy. It’s not that I didn’t want joy in my life.

It’s that after a while it felt there wasn’t room to pursue joy, that I needed to stay focused on my obligations.

I didn’t want to look away from my work responsibilities or from the pain in the world. Joy seemed like something I didn’t have time for.

Instead, what I’ve realised is that joy is heart-expanding. When I play and have fun, I come back with new perspectives and insights. And I want to share all this with other people.

Joy is a heart still beating.

My year of joyful movement has meant approaching exercise and adventure like a kid again.

I’d love to surf and kayak. And I want to finally figure out how to do a cartwheel.

“Joy is the justice we give ourselves”, by J Drew Lanham, is published in Emergence Magazine.