The Biology of Joy

Sometimes my daughter asks me to come outside and play, and I wish saying yes came as easily as it once did.

She wants me to push her on the swing, come see something she's discovered, or join her in whatever adventure she's invented for the afternoon. I know these invitations won't last forever. I know there will come a time when she no longer wants me following her into the backyard, and I'll probably miss being asked.

Knowing that doesn't make me any less tired.

Sometimes I take her to the park and sit in the car while she plays. I have my phone or something I'm working on, and she's out there enjoying herself, occasionally looking back to see whether I'm coming. I want to be the mother who gets out, pushes the swing, and participates without having to negotiate with herself first. I want the experience to sound appealing enough that my body follows along.

It isn't that I don't love spending time with her. And it isn't that I've forgotten how to enjoy myself. There are plenty of things I still want to do, places I'd like to go, experiences I'd like to have. I can imagine them quite vividly, right down to how much I might enjoy them once I'm there.

The difficulty is getting there.

For years, I described this as a lack of joy. Sometimes I called it depression, although sadness was rarely the defining feature. It was more like living with the volume turned down on something I knew was supposed to be playing. Life continued. I worked, raised children, solved problems, made plans, and developed interests. I could laugh, appreciate something beautiful, or become completely absorbed in an idea. But the underlying vitality that makes ordinary participation feel inviting seemed increasingly difficult to access.

I began wondering whether I had lost my capacity for joy, or whether something was interfering with my ability to reach it.

The Things I Used to Do

When my older children were young, we sometimes went for walks, wandered through stores without necessarily buying anything, or drove around listening to music and being silly. I remember afternoons when the weather was especially nice and I'd take a book onto the porch simply because sitting outside sounded pleasant.

Those weren't extraordinary experiences. That was part of their appeal. I didn't need to plan an outing, justify the time, or calculate whether I had enough energy left to enjoy it. Sometimes I just did something because I felt like doing it.

I don't want to romanticize those years. Raising my children involved substantial challenges, and my sense of joy was already diminished in ways I didn't fully understand. Even when I could appreciate something pleasant, the enjoyment sometimes felt muted. But there were still moments when the distance between thinking something sounded nice and actually doing it was relatively short.

That distance has grown.

I notice it in surprisingly small things. A beautiful afternoon doesn't necessarily make me want to go outside anymore. An invitation to do something enjoyable can register first as a logistical obligation. Getting dressed, putting on makeup, leaving the house, driving somewhere, walking around, interacting with people, and eventually coming home can feel like an entire project before I've even considered the activity itself.

Some of this is ordinary adulthood. Responsibilities complicate spontaneity. Children have needs, money is finite, and leaving the house can produce an impressive assortment of unexpected problems. I've lived enough life to know that a supposedly simple outing isn't always simple.

But those explanations don't account for everything. Even when the circumstances are favorable, when nothing particularly difficult is expected and I genuinely want to go, the effort can still feel enormous.

I miss the version of myself who could want to do something and simply go do it.

A Life That Kept Getting Heavier

I've spent considerable time trying to reconstruct when this changed, and the chronology is less straightforward than I initially assumed.

I underwent bariatric surgery when I was twenty, at an age when I had very little adult life against which to measure its effects. During the following years, I worked, spent time with friends, participated in church, went shopping, ate out, and generally lived a fairly ordinary life. I was a homebody even then, but that was largely a matter of preference. I don't remember feeling overwhelmed by ordinary activities. Money probably limited what I did more than energy.

I was also young, without children or the considerable responsibilities that would eventually define my life. I don't remember those years well enough to make sweeping claims about my health or emotional state, but I have no reason to rewrite them as a period of obvious exhaustion simply because I now know more about my surgery.

About six years later, I began fostering children and eventually adopted three siblings. Life changed substantially.

Parenting children with significant behavioral and emotional needs brought responsibilities that couldn't be neatly contained within a schedule. There were appointments, difficult situations, unpredictable reactions, and the constant work of anticipating what might happen next. Much of that responsibility fell to me. Over time, professional demands grew, financial pressures accumulated, and the ordinary maintenance of a household became another system requiring attention.

None of it arrived in one dramatic installment. It was more like adding furniture to a room without ever removing anything. Each new responsibility found a place somewhere, until eventually there was very little room left to move.

And because I was generally capable of handling things, I kept handling them.

Competence can be misleading that way. From the outside, a functioning life may look like evidence that its demands are manageable. From the inside, functioning can mean that the essential things continue getting done, even as everything optional becomes increasingly difficult.

You can be remarkably effective at keeping a life running while having very little energy left to enjoy living it.

The Surgery I Didn't Understand

Years later, I learned that the bariatric procedure I'd undergone was substantially more malabsorptive than I had understood. For much of my adult life, I'd lived with an altered digestive system without fully appreciating the degree of nutritional management it required.

I knew deficiencies could happen. Occasionally, I addressed low iron or vitamin D. I took supplements, pursued treatment when problems became apparent, and carried on. What I hadn't understood was the larger, ongoing significance of the surgery itself.

That discovery complicated the story I'd been telling myself about my exhaustion.

Significant malabsorption can contribute to nutritional deficiencies that affect energy, physical functioning, and neurological health. But knowing that doesn't tell me how much of my experience came from the surgery, how much came from the accumulating demands of my life, or how much might involve depression, sleep, metabolic health, aging, or other factors.

I can't assign percentages to twenty years of living.

What interests me is the possibility that these influences were interacting all along. At twenty-two, I may have had enough energy and relatively few demands that whatever limitations existed weren't particularly noticeable. At thirty-two, with children, work, and an increasingly complicated household, the same physiological circumstances might have carried a different cost. By forty, after years of cumulative demands and incomplete nutritional understanding, I was evaluating my energy against a baseline that had been changing for decades.

Or perhaps the explanation is different in ways I haven't yet discovered.

The frustrating thing about gradual change is that you rarely notice each adjustment as it happens. You become tired, so you rest more. An outing feels like too much, so you stay home. Something you once did spontaneously becomes something you have to plan. Eventually, you stop expecting yourself to do certain things, and the adjustment begins to look like a preference.

I was functioning, so I assumed I was functioning normally.

I'm no longer certain those are the same thing.

The Exhausting Business of Getting Better

I haven't spent these years doing nothing about the problem.

I've tried therapy, medication, nutritional interventions, exercise, organizational systems, supplements, medical appointments, and various attempts to make life more manageable. I've researched symptoms, treatments, physiology, and possible explanations. Some interventions have helped certain things. Others have produced limited or temporary improvements. None has given me a simple explanation for the whole experience.

There is a peculiar exhaustion involved in trying to solve exhaustion.

Appointments require scheduling and transportation. Treatment requires money, follow-through, and often considerable research. Improving nutrition requires planning. Exercise requires energy. Organization requires maintenance. Even asking for help can become another project to coordinate.

At times, I've wondered whether the solution was simply to try harder, become more disciplined, establish better routines, or stop allowing myself to retreat into work and research.

But effort has never been an especially scarce resource in my life. I've spent decades exerting it.

What I've had less of is the freedom to spend energy without worrying about what else might require it.

For a long time, I approached each difficulty as an individual problem. If my mood was low, perhaps I needed a different treatment. If I was tired, perhaps I needed another nutritional intervention. If the house was overwhelming, perhaps I needed a better system. If I wasn't doing enough enjoyable things, perhaps I needed to make more of an effort.

Each explanation had some merit. Each proposed solution addressed something real.

But they all existed within the same life.

Improving one variable didn't automatically reduce the others. A more organized household didn't eliminate medical complications. Correcting a deficiency didn't remove parenting responsibilities. A productive week at work didn't create more hours for recovery. And the energy required to pursue improvement had to come from somewhere.

I began to wonder whether I'd been trying to solve a cumulative problem through a series of isolated repairs.

Wanting Isn't the Same as Doing

One reason I've struggled to describe this experience is that my motivation hasn't disappeared uniformly.

Give me an interesting question, a complicated problem, or the beginnings of a new idea, and I can become absorbed for hours. I love research, writing, developing frameworks, imagining possibilities, and following an unexpected connection into an entirely different subject. My mind can be almost comically enthusiastic about creating more work for itself.

I have no shortage of things I want to build, understand, or experience.

Yet I can spend an entire afternoon enthusiastically developing an idea for a book and then struggle to summon the energy to take my daughter to the park.

At first glance, that seems contradictory. If I have enough motivation to work on something intellectually demanding, why can't I redirect a little of it toward an activity I also want to do?

But motivation isn't a single, interchangeable supply.

Being interested in something, anticipating pleasure, initiating an activity, sustaining physical effort, and enjoying an experience once it begins are related processes, not identical ones. Their relationship can be affected by mood, health, fatigue, context, and the demands involved.

Research is particularly accessible to me. I can sit down, follow my curiosity, and receive an almost immediate reward when something begins to make sense. An outing requires a different kind of activation. There is preparation, movement, coordination, transition, and often the need to remain attentive to someone else's experience.

That doesn't make intellectual work effortless. It simply means the effort is different, and some forms of engagement seem much easier for me to initiate than others.

I don't think my curiosity is the problem. It's one of the parts of myself that still feels especially alive.

What troubles me is how difficult it has become to carry that aliveness into other parts of my life.

The Difference Between Interest and Participation

When I think about my teenage years, one of the things I remember most fondly is being involved in a community that mattered to me. Much of my life revolved around church, where I participated in drama, worship, prayer, and youth activities. I had friendships, responsibilities, and a sense of belonging. I wasn't especially interested in the typical high school social scene. I had found people and activities I enjoyed, and I wanted to be there.

I don't remember having to persuade myself to participate in things I genuinely looked forward to.

Now I can want to belong to something meaningful and still dread the practical requirements of showing up.

Recently, I finally attended a church class I'd been putting off for years. Getting up, getting ready, and leaving the house didn't appeal to me, but I wanted to participate, and afterward I was glad I'd gone. I can imagine contributing to a ministry serving single mothers, using my experience and abilities in a way that would be deeply fulfilling. I can also imagine feeling exhausted by the recurring obligation of being somewhere at a particular time.

Both reactions are genuine.

That's what makes this difficult to explain. I'm not describing a person who has stopped caring about relationships, experiences, or meaningful work. I'm describing someone whose interests and intentions often exceed the energy available to act on them.

And while I sometimes enjoy myself once I've made the effort, that isn't always the whole answer. There have been years when even the pleasure I could access felt less vivid than I wanted it to. The problem has involved both the experience of enjoyment and the increasingly difficult process of pursuing it.

I don't know exactly how those two things are connected. I only know that they're both part of the story.

What Rest Doesn't Restore

There's a common assumption that exhaustion can be addressed by taking a break.

Sometimes it can. Sleep matters. Rest matters. Having an afternoon without obligations can be wonderful.

But I've discovered that a temporary absence of activity isn't necessarily the same as relief from the conditions that made me exhausted.

I can spend a quiet evening at home while remaining responsible for everything waiting on the other side of it. The bills still need paying. The children still have needs. Work still has deadlines. The medical questions still exist. The house still requires maintenance, and tomorrow will arrive with its own collection of demands.

Rest may interrupt those responsibilities without reducing them.

Over time, I've become increasingly interested in the idea of margin: the resources remaining after the demands of life have been met. Those resources include time and money, certainly, but also physical energy, cognitive bandwidth, emotional capacity, health, support, and the opportunity to recover.

When demands repeatedly consume nearly everything available, the essential activities tend to win. Work gets done because it has to. Children are cared for because they need to be. Problems get solved because leaving them unresolved has consequences.

Pleasure, spontaneity, exploration, and recreation are easier to postpone.

Eventually, postponement can become a way of life.

I don't believe this means joy can be reduced to a mathematical formula. People experience delight under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and there are people with comfortable lives who struggle to feel it. Human experience is far too complicated for a simple equation to explain.

But I do think the conditions in which we live influence how readily we can participate in the things that make life meaningful. Biology matters. Circumstances matter. Relationships, resources, and recovery matter.

And when several of those conditions become difficult at once, telling someone to make more time for joy may be asking them to spend something they don't have readily available.

The Life Beyond Maintenance

I still imagine a larger life for myself.

There are places I want to visit, things I want to create, people I'd like to meet, conversations I'd love to have, and experiences I want to share with my daughter. I want to participate in meaningful communities, contribute to work that matters, and occasionally do something for no better reason than that it sounds enjoyable.

I don't expect every day to feel exciting. I don't need to become someone who loves crowded events, constant socializing, or elaborate adventures. I've always enjoyed being home, thinking, reading, and working on things that interest me.

I just don't want staying home to be the default because everything else feels too costly.

There's a difference between choosing a quiet life because it suits you and gradually arranging your life around what you can manage.

That difference has become increasingly important to me.

I want to be able to take a book onto the porch because the weather is beautiful. I want to accept an invitation without immediately calculating the effort involved. I want to take my daughter somewhere and have enough energy left to join her, rather than being relieved that I've managed to get us there.

More than anything, I want enjoyment to feel less like another responsibility I'm supposed to fulfill.

I know there may not be one intervention that restores that experience. The causes of my fatigue and diminished motivation are still questions worth investigating, and some may be more treatable than others. There are also circumstances in my life that can't be corrected with medication, supplementation, or better sleep. Responsibilities require resources, and some forms of relief have to come from changes in the way a life is structured.

I don't yet know what the right combination looks like.

But I have become less willing to interpret every difficulty participating as evidence that I don't want enough, appreciate enough, or try hard enough.

The Question I Was Asking Wrong

For a long time, I thought the question was why I couldn't feel more joy.

It seemed reasonable. I could recognize good things in my life without always experiencing the degree of pleasure or gratitude I expected. I could imagine experiences I wanted to have without finding the motivation to pursue them. I could accomplish a great deal while feeling strangely disconnected from the vitality I assumed should accompany a functioning life.

But the longer I've examined the question, the less convinced I am that joy itself can be understood apart from everything required to experience it.

There is the pleasure of an experience, and there is the energy needed to pursue it. There is the desire for connection, and there is the capacity to show up. There is the ability to recognize something good, and there is the felt experience of enjoying it. Those distinctions may sound small until you've spent years living in the space between them.

I still have questions about my biology, my history, and the cumulative demands of my life. I don't know how much of my experience belongs to each, or whether I'll ever be able to separate them neatly. Perhaps there was never a single thing that took my vitality away. Perhaps the changes were gradual enough that I adapted to each one before recognizing what they amounted to together.

What I do know is that I haven't stopped wanting to live.

I want to do things. I want to be involved. I want to enjoy the people I love, pursue the experiences that interest me, and have enough energy to follow an ordinary impulse toward something pleasant.

Sometimes, when my daughter asks me to come outside, I look at her and wish the answer could simply be yes. Not a carefully reasoned yes, reached after reminding myself how quickly she'll grow up. Not a yes that requires me to summon the last of my energy and hope the experience will be worth it.

Just yes.

The kind that comes when something sounds nice, and you still have enough of yourself available to go enjoy it.

I don't know exactly what it will take to make that feeling more accessible again. But after years of questioning my motivation, I've begun asking a different question.

What would it take to have more life left in me after I've finished taking care of everything life requires?