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“The liminal space of water is a complex cycle spanning different scales of time—spending just days in the atmosphere and decades in snow and glaciers, and thousands of years in the ocean… A drop of water inside me appears on my skin as sweat in the summer. This evaporates into the air, traveling as water vapour. Its travels expose it to conditions that cause it to undergo condensation, and it falls to the earth as some kind of precipitation. It can fall on and be collected in the ocean… It can run off into a lake or a river that moves it to the ocean. It can be transpired, perspired, expired by plants and animals. And still, it is in motion. And still, it is all the water in the world today. Every drop is all the water that has ever been on the planet. And all life shares this water.” — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “” (2025, p. 50-51)

“We need joy as we need air. We need love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share.” — Maya Angelou, cited in “” (2024) by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

I open up this paper—a meditation—with water to situate my reflections on joy. The quotes center water, which to me serves as a metaphor to describe the embodied expression and energetic experience of being-sensing joy. Trusting my embodied knowledge, a knowing that leans into or comes from within, I describe joy as being present. Being with the entanglements of life, the complexities and contradictions of being in motion, like water. And, also being still—but not passive while renewing or restoring the self, or (dare I be) resting, idling.

Joy has a quality that is particularly distinct from happiness and hope, yet these are often described as synonymous to each other. Whereas happiness may be purposeful or intentionally expressed, hope is a cultivated practice, and joy is unconditional, boundless. In offering these distinctions I’m reminded of what abolitionist activist Mariame Kaba expressed in an interview:

“Hope is a discipline. It’s less about 'how you feel,’ and more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still gonna put one foot in front of the other, that you’re still going to get up in the morning… It’s work to be hopeful. It’s not like a fuzzy feeling… you have to actually put in energy, time, and you have to be clear-eyed, and you have to hold fast to having a vision. It’s a hard thing to maintain. But it matters to have it, to believe that it’s possible, to change the world…” — Mariame Kaba (full interview available ) 

Joy is a state of being, a moving fluid process of embracing uncertainty, and life unraveling and revealing before us. Because joy can be contagious it offers possibilities for rebelliousness or rebelling against our own conditioning and hegemonic systems through and beyond the logics of coloniality or modernity that contains us. 

Let me offer us an invitation. Do you remember what it was like to color outside the lines as a child? Such a small act of resistance that, perhaps at a young age, brought you a deep sense of freedom, sovereignty, and glee. Joy!(?) 

These thoughts on joy, while informed largely by the literature on decolonial theory, women of color feminisms, and engaged Buddhism—particularly in relation to healing, liberation and movement building—manifested for me during a watercolor still life art-making workshop I attended. I’m not an artist, I’ve had no training, nor have I ever aspired to be one. However, I have absolute appreciation and reverence for art as a practice, process and performance, and as an expression that refracts life and living. For these reasons, I have always remained curious about art—both what it is and what it does. I enjoy playing or experimenting with all art forms. 

On a rather unusually hot summer day in Santa Cruz, eager to get outside my thinking-head and broken airconditioned house, I joined a diverse group of people at a watercolor painting workshop to try out this mode of art-making. We were instructed by the artist to select a few items from the assortment of baked goods, fruits, plants, and colorful kitchen cloths to create an arrangement that would serve as the model for the “still life” scene that we would paint. The smell of freshly baked, huge sourdough croissants, alongside the ripely picked stone fruit, contrasted with the wild flowers, weeds, and herbs. The different smells and textures awakened my senses and also provoked a feeling of anticipatory anxiety. 

Only once before, in my recent memory, had I used watercolor paints. How could I begin? What should I create? Why would anyone use water to paint when it cannot be controlled or contained!? It will be messy... And there, in that last thought I came to the realization that water is a teacher; it helps me let go, release, be at ease and just flow. The world as it is, is a mess… I jumped into the art-making process by letting go of the expectation to produce something neat or tidy, of assuming a particular outcome, aesthetically beautiful or pleasing for others. And most of all judging the uncertainty of the journey to create. Instead, I embraced the joy of being-feeling in the moment of attunement to the present. Especially, letting my mind be still so that my heart and hand could flow, and follow the currents of water drops curving to blend with the paint running and soaking through the paper. 

Joy is a spectrum of feelings, or emotions that radiate inward-outward, and in wayward ways. It is uncontainable, indescriptive, spontaneous, and sometimes unruly. And, it is rebellious because it is emergent; it surfaces, like a wave rising in the ocean; it connects, like the rivers that meet the seas. The qualities of being water—active, adaptive and unreleting—bring joy to me. 

Joy is being present. To be present, now. To show(ing) up, and be(ing) there for what is as it is. Holding joy alongside humility, curiosity and compassion as expressions found always within and beyond me/us. Knowing that these states of being can help us build the capacity, the emotional endurance, collective courage and relational power to resist interlocking harms beyond our individual hurts. 

To offer a closing reflection on joy manifesting as water and stillness, and to honor the writings that have informed my thoughts, I quote Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, author of “” (2025): 

“As activists, thinkers, and everyday people navigating this turbulent terrain, our task is not to resist collapse as though we could hold back its tide but to meet it as an opening—a chance to compost the remnants of outdated systems into something fertile, generative, and alive. This requires new tools, new muscles, and a willingness to stay present in the discomfort of uncertainty. It also requires recognizing the moments of transition—the windows of disillusionment that follow the failures of reactionary politics—as opportunities to offer something transformative: not more fear, but more connection.” (p. 153)

I’m (like) water: I’m always learning/unlearning and growing/expanding ways of knowing/understanding. To end this meditation on water (and still life art-making), I invite you to try  a “mindfulness practice” activity, which you may explore. In this way, I hope to offer us some joy—as well as opportunities to be water: in motion and still, connected and expansive, free and anchored. 

May we share and leverage the radical revolutionary healing, life-affirming potential of collective joy; showing up imperfectly but persistently, and with a commitment to being present. May we be joy more often in the now and in the moments ahead; doing so may help us metabolize or alchemize the violence of injustice into actionable hope, relational solidarity and accountability. May this closing offer you breaths of joy.

Mindfulness Practice

Take a moment to breathe in, or feel into your body, and notice sensations; breathe out and release any tension or discomfort. Find stillness in your body and mind, if possible, without forcing. What if what you want actually already wanted you and it has been looking for you all this time? 

When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my new place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.

Practice Pause Activity from Valerie Brown, Marisela B. Gomez & Kaira Jewel Lingo, “” (2024, p. 180)