I talk about the “joy of craft” a lot. At the festival, and retreat, and on this blog, I often talk about celebrating the joy. And I believe it. I believe that a craft practice is inherently a deep and solidly joyful experience. But then, just this week I had a discussion about it that has made me ponder, and want to clarify, what I mean when I talk about the joy.
A very thoughtful human asked me a super interesting question…. they asked whether prescribing joy as part of craft was necessarily helpful. From their perspective, they felt that prescribing joy as an outcome of craft could mean people feel crappy if that wasn’t their experience.
Instantly I knew that that was not quite what I meant when I said “craft for joy” but it made me realise that I’d never taken the time to explain what it was I actually meant.
It’s such a juicy question…. and here are my thoughts.
By talking about “craft as joy” or by stating that craft is an inherently joyful experience I don’t mean that we necessarily feel joy when we make. Some of us do, some of the time, and that is great. But not all the time.
Often when I’m making, I’m feeling a whole range of things. Sometimes joy - yes - and in those moments it can feel like comfort, and satisfaction, and happiness and calm. But also there are many moments when my craft involves feelings of frustration, annoyance, uncertainty and sadness. Sometimes I rage craft. Sometimes my making is about sitting with grief. And I also engage in avoidance craft which definitely doesn’t feel joyful as it always comes with a side dish of guilt.
Sometimes on a particular type of project I’m so engaged, so in flow, that I’m not feeling much of anything at all. Instead I’m in the moment, puzzling out the problem, getting it done. In those moments - moments of flow and engagement - joy is only felt in retrospect.
And so no. When I’m talking about the joy of craft I’m not necessarily talking about craft as an act, feeling joyful in the moment. Because it’s not true. In the moment, craft can involve almost any feeling.
So what do I actually mean when I talk of celebrating the joy of craft?
I believe I first heard about our two selves from Yuval Noah Harari*; the experiential self and the narrative self. Our experiential self who is the self experiencing each moment - who is feeling the feelings and thinking the thoughts. And then there is our narrative self - the self that after the fact reflects on the experience through a lens of meaning and values and context. Our narrative self reconstructs the experience we had giving some weight to the feelings we experienced but also adding particular weight to the ending. In the case of our craft practice the ending is the product we created, how that then integrates into our lives but also what gained from the experience in the context of what we value.
I believe that those two selves - the experiential and the narrative - feel “craft as joy” in different ways. And that the meaning of joy in those two contexts is very different.
Joy as an experience in craft is something that I only have sometimes, in some projects, and at some points in my life. At other times the actual experience of crafting isn’t joyful at all because either life in that moment is hard or because the making itself is hard. But the fact that the crafting isn’t joyful in the moment doesn’t negate the narrative joy I feel about either of those projects, or about the process of craft itself.
For me “Craft As Joy “ relates more to my narrative experience of craft. It’s a joy that is deep and solid and is grounded in gratitude for this process I have that supports me in so many ways. There is a joy to engaging with a process that requires me to stick at something and move through frustration or boredom or fix a mistake I didn’t feel I had the omph to fix. There is satisfaction and purpose and meaning and connection to my values that lasts after the moment of making - not just in the thing I’ve made but in the narrative I construct about what I’ve made and what it means to me.
There is narrative joy that comes from the idea that I am engaging with my becoming by actively being a version of me in this moment that is engaging in life - engaging with the joyful moments but also with the moments that are hard. When I’m using making to sit in my sadness, to stay in place and feel the hard bits of life then I have a support mechanism that is deeply connected and nurturing and that feels joyful. Joy that comes from knowing that I have a making practice available to me whenever I need it.
Joy not in the moment but after the fact - joy felt by my narrative self.
Even if we intuitively understand the joy I speak of, it isn’t something I think we understand well as a society or that we are good at verbalising. In the past I’ve described it as embodied satisfaction and written about how grateful I am to have making as part of my life - but I don’t think that quite captures it. I mentioned gratitude above as well but I think that it is more than satisfaction and it is more than gratitude. It is joy.
Regardless of when the joy is felt as part of my making practice - whether experientially on some days, or narratively always - it is a source of rich wellbeing in my life. It’s a spark of knowing; a knowing that I have access to a craft practice that provides me with support, engagement and connection that nurtures me no matter what is going on in my everyday. Craft as quiet, private, solid, grounded joy.
Our craft doesn’t need to feel joyful to be joyful.
Felicia x
* I couldn’t find the original source so please feel free to let me know where it comes from in the comments.
Before I go to bed I just wanted to say that I’m thinking of all of you. I don’t have any words really tonight but I keep thinking about a phrase from Untamed by Glennon Doyle “This is hard. We can do hard things”. It’s a thought that’s been keeping me company as I’ve been watching all sorts of wonderful people do all sorts of amazing things this week. Stay safe. xx
