How to Get Your Joy Back: Ross Gay (Best Of)
4/28/20261 hr 2 min
Today, we’re sharing our conversation with poet Ross Gay, who reminds us that joy isn’t denial—it’s connection. Not a way out of the world, but a way back into it. Together, we explore how to keep noticing what’s still beautiful, how to rebuild our “delight muscle,” and why witnessing someone else’s joy might be exactly what brings us back to ourselves.
- Why joy is evidence of connection—not escapism
- How to rebuild your “delight muscle” (even when it feels gone)
- The surprising power of witnessing someone else’s joy
- Why “unknowing” the people you love can deepen connection
- Small, daily practices to feel less alone and more alive About Ross: Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor committed to healing the world through observing and articulating joy, delight and gratitude. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. A devoted community gardener, Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. A college football player, he is a founding editor of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin'. Follow We Can Do Hard Things on: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/wecandohardthings
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsGlennon Doyle· Host0:00
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today, we are sharing one of my favorite kinds of episodes, the conversations with people who don't deny how hard it is right now, but somehow hand you a way to stay human and loving and alive inside the hard. The question we're asking today is, how do we keep noticing what is beautiful while everything is on fire? And the person who's answering it is the one and only Ross Gay. In this conversation, Ross teaches us that joy isn't escapism. Joy is not denial. Joy is the evidence that we are connected, entangled, belonging to each other as though our lives depend on it, because they do. Ross teaches us that joy is not denying reality. Joy is not a break from the fight. Joy is the thing that keeps us fighting, because it reminds us what is worth fighting for. In this conversation, we talk about ways to rebuild your delight muscle if yours has atrophied from stress and doom scrolling and grief. We talk about why witnessing someone else's delight can light up your own brain, and we talk about unknowing the people we love, so we can practice seeing them again and again freshly with beginner's mind