How can we be a good friend to another if we have not yet befriended ourselves? The Golden Rule of doing unto others as we do unto ourselves doesn’t work if we treat ourselves like shit.

I can’t sleep, so I’m writing this Daily Practice of Joy blog on the day before Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday. The only one not built around excessive consumption — well, other than of food. The only holiday whose basis is gratitude.

I’ve been thinking about the connection between joy and gratitude. But recently another word kept cropping up. I found myself ruminating on the curious connection between Schadenfreude and gratitude.Then tonight, when I couldn’t sleep, I made the mistake of going on social media, and something clicked.

To practice joy every day, we have to acknowledge that fear will try to bend our ears every single day. In the news. In our minds. In daily conversation. Fear will repeat and misdirect and puff itself up. But if we know this, we can call its bluff. We can see what’s happening and flip fear the bird by turning fear’s own techniques on itself.

This morning — the weight of worthlessness weighing me down — the thought came, “Why not go back to something that really helped you. Why not blog again?”

The funny thing about blogging is that you start it for yourself. No one has the time or energy or desire to read all the good blogs out there. But as you’re writing, this glimmer of an idea forms that maybe, just maybe, something might resonate for someone else.

There is a Hopi proverb: “If two different bowls get the job done, then what difference does it make if one bowl is dark and the other light?” But what if neither bowl seems to get the job done and we end up with only potsherds? We can keep choosing and using and switching bowls. Or we can enact a new old paradigm and learn to think like the Hopi. Before we make any decision, we can consider its effect on the next seven generations. We can recognize that all dreams spin out from the same web. We can acknowledge that some pots cannot be mended, yet their remnants can serve to remind us of a broken (albeit beautiful) past and exhort us to become better potters.

Fear wins when we give up on joy. Love wins when we find joy in the challenges. I have to remind myself of that every day. But this picture reminds me that when I am with people I love, bringing others joy, joy radiates back.