Meaning and Joy (Wheaton College Lavender Graduation)

In May, I had the great honor of speaking at my alma mater, Wheaton College (MA), as a part of their Lavender Graduation, a ceremony acknowledging queer graduates. I received requests after the fact to post the speech here, and I am happy to oblige.

Friends, I am so honored to be here with you tonight. It was only three years ago that I was right where you are, bracing for the impact of the Real World. 

I know that, right now, the Real World feels overwhelming and unfriendly. Since you were in high school, we've been living in what we love to call "unprecedented times". But this has all happened before.

I am not here tonight to tell you that the world is hard, or that things will get worse before they get better. I'm not here to remind you of the grimmer realities; I don't believe any of us need reminding. Instead, I'm here to remind you that the world is good and worth saving.

Lindy hop, a partner dance similar to east coast swing, originates in the Black community in the late 1920s. In the '40s, despite being considered trashy by white elites, it gained popularity, among both marginalized populations here in the U.S. and anti-Nazi youth in Germany. In fact, Lindy hop is the precise dance style that led to the kind of "no dancing allowed" spaces depicted by Footloose. Lindy hop was considered uncultured, overly sexual, and generally transgressive.

But the Black community continued to dance, even when Lindy hop was most strongly frowned upon. Why? Because it was joyful for them. "Shorty" George Snowden, a pioneer of the genre, said of the first time he was offered money to perform that "all we wanted to do was dance anyway." In the midst of world wars and Jim Crow and the Great Depression, people found joy and release and community in dance, and it helped them survive. 

In times like this, it is so easy to feel isolated and helpless. Those feelings can sap our strength and our will to go on. And in order to replenish those things, we need joy. And I want to be clear - there is not one of us who is incapable of finding joy. It may not be easy, and it may not come from the sources you expect, but go looking for it. Find your people. Create your art. Do work that holds meaning for you.

One of my great joys is dancing. I do two-step, west coast swing, and line dance - all of them in community with other people who feel the same joy I do on the dance floor. But I have so many other sources of joy. A few times a week, I watch sci-fi or fantasy shows with my best friend on Zoom and listen to her infodump about whatever we're watching. Once or twice a month, I gather with other Jewish nerds to talk about speculative fiction through a Jewish lens. I've started trying to see at least one friend every week outside of planned events. And even though life is hard and busy and chaotic, holding these patterns keeps me alive and reminds me how much good there is in the world.

I feel some of you itching to say, "But Jo, I don't know where to find those communities." And that's fair; adult life doesn't have theme houses and clubs and ensembles laid out in a tidy list the way Wheaton does. You have to go find them yourself. But they are there if you look for them. They're in your libraries and your local groups and even in your workplaces. You are never fully alone in a crowd.

And yes, some of those communities can feel like a compromise. The space in which I first started doing partner dancing is one where many people have distinctly different politics from mine. Some of my Jewish spaces have majority opinions on geopolitical issues that I don't agree with. No space is perfect. But I can make it better. You can make it better. You can push for more masking protocol at events. You can invite your coworkers to introduce themselves with their names and pronouns. You can ask the pointed questions, for yourself and others, about equity and access and representation. And if we keep doing it, our spaces will change.

My favorite writer, Lindy West, writes about how her husband was in an AV gear swap group where sellers started offering minor discounts to marginalized people, and of course, some people of a specific demographic hated this very much and demanded that the mods take action. And none of us would be surprised to hear that the mod decision was to ban those discounts. Instead, the mod team essentially said "people can sell their own stuff for whatever they want, stop bothering us with this." And people kept complaining, and the mods started banning people, and the folks who didn't like it made their own group, and the original gear swap group improved and thrived because those two guys kept saying what their policy was and enforcing it until it stuck. 

We have that power. Even if we're not the admins or the bosses or the leaders, we can still keep saying "this is what needs to happen" until it does. Each of us, each of you, has a voice in your communities.

While I spend a lot of time in my communities, I'm also making meaning for myself by trying to contribute to the growth of the next generations. I taught religious school for six years. Since October, I've been regularly babysitting two young boys. Next year, I hope to be working with young adults. And for the last decade, I've spent my summers working at summer camps and leadership programs.

Last summer, even though I wasn't a counselor, there was a boy who I especially looked out for - fifteen years old, considered a "problem child". In truth, he's a good kid who seeks attention because the adults in his life don't always give it. Even at camp, a lot of adults wrote him off; I was one of the few staff who genuinely liked him, and one of even fewer staff he felt safe with. I was his first stop when things went wrong, and I felt that responsibility strongly.

In all honesty, I wasn't looking to emotionally adopt a teenager, not when I had so much of my own stuff to deal with. But he needed someone, and I was there, and he felt like he could trust me. How could I do anything else?

I don't tell this story to brag, but to say: what will happen to an angry, disaffected teenager who doesn't receive care and support from adults in his life? And what will happen to any of us without that care and support from one another?

So that's my mission, the thing that gives me purpose: being there for kids and young adults who don't have a support system. It's hard work, but it brings me enormous joy and makes my life feel meaningful.

Meaning and joy. Joy and meaning. These are the two most vital ingredients to keep yourself not just surviving, but living. Adult life is not just bills and work and responsibilities; it is also the freedom to find joy and meaning for yourself, and to create joy and meaning for others. And the best way to do that is to find a community - one that supports you and brings you joy - and to contribute to that community as best you can.

Three years ago, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, I wrote on my blog: 

"I don't know how we cope. But I do know it doesn't start with a ballot box, and it doesn't start with a protest sign, and it doesn't start with surrender. It starts with community. It starts with reaching out to one another and holding each other up."

My challenge to each of you is to do one thing per day that holds someone else up. It can be as big as marching in the street or as small as complimenting the cashier's earrings, but see if you can do one thing every day that makes the world better for somebody else.

The Jewish text Pirkei Avot puts it better than I ever could: "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it." That is to say, none of us can fix the world alone; instead, all of us must fix it together.

We are in this together. We always have been, and we always will be. The only way for us to get through is to find joy and meaning together, to build community. So get out there and start building.