I have heard people say that happiness is simple. Just erase the fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past. I understand the charm of that sentence. It shines like a clean window. But when I am alone with my breath in the Yukon, when the air is so cold it stings the inside of my nose and the eyelashes start collecting tiny crystals, I know the mind does not work like that. The future still sends its shadows across the snow. The past still leaves tracks.
In the Yukon, I have danced at forty below, when the streetlights glow like small moons and the world sounds like it is wrapped in wool. In that temperature, joy is not an idea. It is a physical negotiation. My fingers begin to numb. My hips tighten. The muscles do not want to open. The body asks, are you sure. I answer by moving anyway, not with bravado, but with attention. One step, then another. I am not trying to be heroic. I am trying to be honest. The cold is real. My fear is real. My memories are real. And still, there is space for rhythm.
When I started my cross country tour across Canada in 2022 and carried it into 2023, I learned that loneliness is not a lack of company. It can visit in a busy parking lot. It can sit beside you at a diner counter while the waitress refills your coffee. It can arrive when the phone has no signal and the highway seems to hold its breath. Loneliness shows up when you cannot find yourself inside your own day. If you keep running from silence, it follows you like exhaust.
At first, I tried to outrun it with noise. I would fill the car with music, podcasts, calls, and plans. I treated joy like a shield. If I stayed bright enough, maybe nothing dark could touch me. But that kind of positivity is like a thin jacket in a northern winter. It looks fine until the wind changes. Then it fails, and you feel foolish for believing it was protection.
The healthier side of joy is not a costume. It is a practice. It is the moment you stop demanding that every feeling be pleasant, and you start listening to what each feeling is trying to say. Some afternoons on the road, I would park near a lake, watch the water move under a gray sky, and let my thoughts speak without interruption. The mind does not always speak kindly. It rehearses disasters. It brings old arguments back to the table. It tries to predict pain so it can claim control. Instead of fighting it, I learned to treat it the way you treat a friend who is scared. You do not call them weak. You do not order them to smile. You sit with them until the trembling eases.
That is where dance became more than a performance for me. It became a way of meeting myself in silence. When I move, the feelings have a place to go. Grief can travel down the arms. Anxiety can leave through the feet. Hope can rise through the chest without needing to pretend that everything is fine. I can tell the truth in movement without announcing it in words.
In small towns, I would show up at community halls, schools, bus stops, and outdoor spaces, and I would dance as if I was lighting a small fire. People would gather, sometimes shyly, sometimes laughing, sometimes with tears they did not expect. Afterward, someone might tell me about a difficult year. Someone else might say they forgot they could laugh. That is the kind of positivity I trust. It does not demand that pain disappear. It makes room for pain to sit nearby without taking over the whole room.
On the prairies, I watched sunrise spread across the fields like warm paint. In northern Manitoba, the wind made the lake look like crumpled tin. In Ontario, a stranger pressed a paper plate of food into my hands as if generosity was the most natural language. None of these moments erased my fear of what might happen next. None of them deleted what had happened before. They simply reminded me that I was alive in the present, and that life was still offering itself.
Joy, in its healthiest form, is recognition. It says, I am here. You are here. We are sharing this minute on the same land, under the same wide sky. Happiness is not the elimination of fear and memory. It is learning to hold them without letting them drive. Fear can sit in the back seat. Memory can point to landmarks. But my hands stay on the steering wheel. When I dance in the cold of the Yukon or in the warmth of a crowded hall, I am choosing presence. I am choosing a kind of light that does not deny the dark, but refuses to be swallowed by it.
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