Noach - being joy-adjacent is almost like being happy but it’s miles away
Genesis 6:9 - 11:32 | Isaiah 54:1 - 55:5
Summary: Being joy-adjacent is like joining a gym but not going. It’s close, but it’s not enough. The hard part is actually starting to do the work. And this might begin with deep honesty about how far away we actually are.
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Funny how much joining a gym feels just like going to the gym. It’s close enough that, if you squint your eyes just right and don’t think about it too much, you can basically convince yourself that you more or less “go” to the gym, give or take, and you’re on the right track. So keep it up!
Imagine what would happen if a representative of the gym would come to you and say, “Friend. I want you to know that you’ve been a member of our gym for 40 months now and you’ve come three times. During those times you spent 60% of your time getting water, drinking water, or showering, you burned a total of 156 calories, you’ve added about 0.01g of muscle mass, and you never even broke a sweat.” What would happen? It might cause some real cognitive dissonance.
That’s about what I got recently when I was confronted with the reality that I’m kind of miserable. The reason this is shocking is because I am “joy-adjacent.” I am, after all, a “member” (for lack of a better word) of the Breslov community, a “follower” (for lack of a better word) of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, whose strongly emphasizes joy. “It is a big mitzvah to always be in joy.”
Setting aside for today what joy means. Whatever it means, I am not it. I am not happy. I am usually pretty grumpy and kind of miserable. But it’s confusing, because I am “joy-adjacent.” I’ve got the Breslov books - I even read them, religiously! I do Breslov things - hitbodedut and the like. I go to Uman. I rock the Breslov hairstyle. I think about joy. I support joy - at least in others. But I’m not happy.
Even setting aside for today the relative benefits of being “grumpy + joy-adjacent” versus being grumpy without being joy-adjacent, I’ve been going on the assumption that being joy-adjacent is pretty much like being happy, but it turns out it’s not. It’s not enough. You have to actually go to the gym.
So I went to the gym. It actually wasn’t that hard. I more or less decided to be happy while I’m working on being happy, instead of being miserable until I somehow miraculous become happy. And, frankly, it’s been great. I’ve been in a really good mood, with side-benefits of feeling a bit more humble, relaxed, and pleasant to be around. Bonus!
The gap between being joyous and being joy-adjacent is a million miles wide. So, too, is the gap between love-adjacent and actual loving, and the like. What pulls across those lines? What gets us from almost-loving to loving? Sometimes we just need to see, clear and straight, what we are actually doing, what is actually happening, and what the actual results are.
That’s what happened with Noah. What was Noah’s responsibility toward his generation? At the very least, he was put in place to tell people the news about the pending flood. For this reason, according to tradition, God tasked Noah with building an ark and didn’t make an ark descend, already complete, from outer space. This task - in the absence of Home Depot - would take about 130 years, during which people would ask him what he was doing, and why, and he would tell them.
We have every reason to believe that Noah adequately performed this task. But we have no record that Noah advocated for the other people of his generation. Unlike later figures - like Abraham and Moses - who would advocate for their generation, it seems that Noah was silent on that count…
… at least until after the flood. According to one incredible text, Noah surveyed the carnage wrought by the flood as he emerged from the ark. He asked God, “How could you?” to which God responded, “Foolish shepherd! Why didn’t you say something before I brought the flood?!?” In response, brings offerings on an altar before God. It is an offering of penance, of prayer, of confusion, and of aspiration - offerings he perhaps ought to have brought beforehand, but now he knows. He is transformed.
At that point, Noah goes from bystander to advocate, from caring-adjacent to caring, from shipbuilder to servant of God. It took a world-altering flood, but it worked.
I hope for myself, and for others, not to require cataclysm, catastrophe or collapse in order to make the move from whatever I am adjacent to over to whatever I need to actually do and be. Thankfully, this time around as I sought to move from joy-adjacent to actual joy, I got a good look at myself in the virtual mirror and that was enough.