September 25, 2026

Joy Needs No Reason

Joy seems to be a part of an unconditional wish to live, not survival at any cost but engagement with life on its own terms.

Rachel Naomi Remen is a physician who has lived with Crohn's disease since childhood and has spent decades counseling people facing cancer and other serious illness through the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. Writing Kitchen Table Wisdom, she noticed that her sickest patients often distinguished sharply between happiness, which depends on things going well, and joy, which did not wait for good news or good health. She saw joy instead as a fierce, quiet commitment to being fully present to whatever life actually offered that day. That distinction matters because it means beauty and joy are available now, in ordinary circumstances, not reserved for some easier future.