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“We need joy as we need air. We need love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share.”

– Maya Angelou

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With Juneteenth coming up (and the recent launch of Freedom School, my new Black history digital subscription that I’m obsessed with), I’ve recently found myself looking over some of those historic documents that America’s Founding Fathers put together. You know, like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and all that.

In the Declaration of Independence, they penned, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That was written in 1776… while many of them enslaved other people. 

This didn’t leave much room for life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness for those subjected to the oppression of slavery.

Throughout history, changemakers have worked to make this statement ring true for all people. We fight for equity to eventually arrive at equality and to ensure that historically excluded communities have a fair shot at life. Yet one area that often goes overlooked is the pursuit of happiness. In doing what we can to free ourselves from the joy-snatching grip of oppression, we find that happiness often slips from our grasp too.

One thing Black activists fought for during civil rights protests of the ’60s was the right to enjoy places of amusement. It wasn’t enough to integrate restaurants and water fountains; they also wanted to enjoy swimming pools, amusement parks, and theaters. A sit-in on a carousel was just as important as a sit-in at a lunch counter because denying the right to recreation was just as dehumanizing, if not more so. 

As a Black woman, choosing joy and delight is a powerful act of resistance. It’s a reclamation of my self-evident, unalienable right. I can fight and I can nap. I can speak out against injustice at a protest and I can update my comfort playlists with the songs of the summer. I’m not a robot, a machine, a product…I’m a person. Life is mine, liberty is mine, happiness is mine. It’s yours too.

Clinging to delight while fighting for change is a radical act. It’s refusing to reduce your own quality of life while working to make life better for everyone else. Joy is a slice of the fruit of the Spirit, a flicker of hope that carries us through moments of despair, and a reminder of what is good in a world that aims to blind us with its evil.

In choosing happiness, we choose resistance, hope, and fortitude, and we remind others that we are free to exist in our fullness.

There’s so much tragedy taking place globally, and it’s easy to feel guilty for enjoying any part of your life in the midst of so much turmoil. Make no mistake, you need joy in your journey if you want to have life… life, abundantly. Make room.