Here’s to choosing joy.

These days, it sometimes feels like joy is a choice.

Between a future headed for uncharted waters, the collective ache we all carry, and an everyday reality changing fast enough to give us whiplash…none of it makes room for joy. And yet the need for it doesn’t go away. If anything, it gets louder. A need for gathering, a need for spontaneity, and a need to opt in to joy every now and then. Not because it’s easier to look away, but because it’s necessary.

As we tiptoe into the quieter months, we ask: how do we carry that collective effervescence forward? How do you take the feeling of a sun-drenched dance floor at 4pm, catching the flash of a stranger’s smile and fold it into a grey street, a grey train, a regular Thursday that forgot that it too, is allowed to feel so good?

The answer is as personal as your dance moves. But we know this much: the groove doesn’t leave when the music stops. It’s always been in the heart and it sits in the body, waiting.

Here’s to choosing joy. Sometimes and on purpose. And to finding more ways to gather and let that halcyon feeling live long after the summer.