Joie De Vivre. The Joy of Living.

Mindful Muse
Aug 17
6 min read

Updated: Aug 19

Basking in a garden with coffee and a good book.

Last week, I noticed something.

Three YouTube creators I enjoy watching were talking about three seemingly different things.

One was seeking silence.

Another was exploring joie de vivre—the joy of living.

And another calmly admitted:

I'm tired all the time.

Different people. Different channels. Different lives.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the thread connecting them.

These weren't people who had fallen out of love with what they were doing.

Quite the opposite.

They loved it.

They loved creating. They loved their audiences. They loved the freedom and possibility of building something that belonged to them.

But somewhere along the way, the thing they loved had grown.

And grown.

Until sustaining what they loved required more of them than perhaps they ever imagined.

🌿 When Something You Love Becomes a Lot

YouTube offers an interesting window into modern life.

When we watch a polished video, we see the finished product.

What we don't see is everything behind it.

Research.Writing. Filming. Lighting. Editing. Thumbnails. Music. Scheduling. Marketing. Analytics. Comments. Sponsorships. Social media. Technology.

On traditional television, entire teams handle those responsibilities.

For many YouTube creators, one person is the team.

And success doesn't necessarily make things simpler.

Often, success asks for more.

🌿The Curious Cost of Loving What We Do

We often recognize when something we dislike is exhausting us.

But what about the things we love?

That's more complicated.

A meaningful career can consume us.

A business we dreamed of building can begin dictating our days.

Caring deeply for others can leave little room for ourselves.

A creative passion can slowly become a production schedule.

Even a life we deliberately chose can become so full that we barely have time to experience it.

Perhaps that's why those three conversations caught my attention.

Seeking silence.

Joie de vivre.

Tired all the time.

They sounded less like separate subjects and more like signals.

Signals from people who weren't trying to escape their lives.

They were trying to find their way back into them.

🌿What Happened to the Joy of Living?

The French have a lovely expression:

Joie de vivre.

Literally translated, joie de vivre means “joy of living.

But I think its meaning reaches beyond happiness.

Joie de vivre is delight in being alive.

It is the ability to experience pleasure in ordinary existence.

A beautiful morning.

A long conversation.

Music coming from another room.

Something delicious simmering on the stove.

Sitting outside with nowhere else you need to be.

Laughing until you forget what you were laughing about.

Watching a bumblebee disappear inside a flower and emerge covered in pollen. 🐝

None of these things seemingly accomplish very much.

Perhaps that's precisely the point.

🌿When Did Joy Become Another Thing to Accomplish?

We live in a culture remarkably skilled at turning almost everything into something measurable.

We track our steps.

Schedule our rest.

Optimize our mornings.

Measure our productivity.

Count our followers.

Monitor our sleep.

Set goals for our hobbies.

Even mindfulness can become another item on the to-do list.

And if we're not careful, we can begin doing the same thing with joy.

I should travel more.

I need a better morning routine.

I should spend more time outside.

I need to practice gratitude.

All worthwhile ideas.

But joie de vivre isn't another self-improvement project.

You don't achieve it.

You notice it.

🌿Maybe We Don't Need More Joy

Perhaps we haven't lost joy at all.

Maybe we've become too occupied to notice where it keeps appearing.

I've noticed something about my own creative life.

My best ideas rarely arrive when I'm sitting at my desk asking myself to come up with one.

They seem to find me when I've disconnected from “the job.”

Sitting quietly.

Chatting with a friend about absolutely nothing important.

Sipping coffee while slowly turning the pages of a favorite magazine.

Or simply observing the world around me without consciously looking for anything at all.

Somewhere in those unguarded moments, I notice something.

A thought connects to another thought.

A story begins forming.

A few words appear.

But perhaps something even more important happens before the idea arrives.

I realize I'm enjoying my life.

I'm not trying to produce anything from the moment. I'm simply in it.

And sometimes I catch myself thinking:

I'm glad to be here.

That may be one of the purest expressions of joie de vivre I know.

And perhaps there's another lesson hidden there.

Maybe joie de vivre doesn't distract us from our best work. Maybe it is one of the places our best work comes from.

A life fully lived replenishes the well from which meaningful work is drawn.

Maybe that's what those three creators were beginning to recognize, too.

Seeking silence.

Wanting more joy.

Acknowledging exhaustion.

Perhaps none of those things signal a loss of creative fire.

Perhaps they are ways of protecting it.

Last week, I wrote about untimed moments—those small spaces in our lives that aren't optimized,

scheduled or expected to produce anything.

I've been thinking about what happens inside those moments.

Maybe this is where joie de vivre has been waiting.

Because when every minute is spoken for, we tend to experience life through the lens of what comes next.

Finish this.

Answer that.

Get there.

Prepare for tomorrow.

Keep going.

But life rarely announces its beautiful moments in advance.

They appear while we're doing something else.

A breeze moves through an open window.

Someone says something unexpectedly funny.

The sky changes color.

A familiar song begins playing.

Someone you love walks into the room.

And for just a moment, life quietly says:

Here.

The question is whether we're present enough to answer.

🌿A Different Question About Balance

We talk frequently about work-life balance.

But I've started wondering whether we're asking the wrong question.

We ask:

How do I fit everything in?

Perhaps joie de vivre invites us to ask: Am I still experiencing the life I'm fitting everything into?

That's a very different question.

Because a perfectly organized life can still be a life we rush through.

A productive life can still feel strangely empty.

And a meaningful life can become exhausting when meaning leaves no room for delight.

We don't necessarily need to abandon ambition.

Or stop creating.

Or care less.

Or shrink our dreams.

Sometimes we need to remember that being alive is more than maintaining the life we've built.

🌿The Things That Don't Need to Become Anything

There should be things in our lives that don't need to grow.

Conversations that don't need an agenda.

Walks that don't need to count toward a fitness goal.

Gardens that don't need to become content.

Books we don't need to finish.

Meals we don't photograph.

Hobbies we aren't trying to monetize.

Afternoons we don't need to justify.

Moments that don't need to become memories before we've even finished living them.

Maybe joie de vivre lives there.

In the wonderfully unnecessary.

In doing something simply because it delights us.

In allowing ourselves to experience a moment without immediately asking what we can make of it.

🌿 Reflection

What in your life once brought you joy simply because you loved it?

And has it quietly become something you now feel responsible for maintaining, improving, or producing?

Maybe you don't need to walk away from it.

Maybe you need to meet it differently.

And perhaps there is an even simpler question worth carrying with you this week:

What makes you glad to be alive?

Not successful.

Not productive.

Not admired.

Not accomplished.

Just—glad to be here.

🌿 A Quiet Invitation

Sometime this week, allow yourself one experience that doesn't need to accomplish anything.

Don't optimize it.

Don't document it.

Don't turn it into a goal.

Don't even insist that it be meaningful.

Just enjoy it.

And if you happen to notice yourself smiling for no particular reason, resist the temptation to move quickly on to the next thing.

Stay there for a moment.

Because perhaps joie de vivre isn't something we need to find.

Perhaps it's what we discover when we stop rushing past the life that's already here. 🌿🐝🦋