Joy is an act of resistance.
I've heard this for as long as I can remember, even as a child I remember hearing it or reading it somewhere. This saying has been around forever and used by different groups.

It's not lost on me that joy being an act of resistance speaks to the fact that there are so many people in the world that do not what other people to have happiness.

Not just on high from the oppressive empire we live in but even just people around you including friends and family.

1/

This is something I understood from an early age from my own abusive parents, whose actions and treatment of myself and my brother were just as oppressive, frightening, destructive, and purposeful as the world is today.

The goal was to keep me miserable and afraid ... they took things from me that brought me joy in order to control me. They withheld things that they knew brought me peace as punishments. The only way I won over them was to stop having attachments to things.

2/

When I emptied my room of everything that brought me joy and learned to live in a quiet kind of resistance, they lost the ability to control me psychologically and instead became more physical.

Why? Because joy and happiness are things that free you from oppression. They free your whole mind and spirit even if your body is not free due to enslavement by a person, a disease, a disability or something else.

Be joyful. Be happy.

It is defiance, it is freedom.

Let no one control you.