§I The Call
Wednesday in January, an hour of the winter block, sixteen of them on the ergs in two rows. The numbers are good. The block is on schedule. Everybody is doing what is on the sheet.
Watch them for the whole hour. Nobody looks like they want to be there.
This does not show up in any measurement anybody takes, and it usually goes unremarked until somebody quits in March.
Simcha is joy, and the Mussar tradition's position is that it is a trait rather than a mood. Something that can be practiced, and whose absence is worth treating as information.
It does not show up in any measurement anybody takes, and it precedes every measurement that eventually does. That is the argument for treating the absence of joy as information rather than as attitude.
| Arena | What it looks like there |
|---|---|
| Rowing | The winter squad where everything is fine and nobody is glad. |
| Youth sport | The eleven-year-old who is very good and has stopped playing. |
| Music | The technically excellent performance with nothing in it. |
| Coaching | The profession people leave, citing everything except this. |
| Any arena | The competent joyless stretch, which can run for years. |
§II Two Failures
The first failure is treating joy as a consequence. It will be enjoyable when the results come. It frequently is not, and the athletes who arrive at the result often report that the flatness came with them.
The second failure is the one this station has to work hardest to avoid. Mandated positivity, enforced enthusiasm, the squad culture where visible enjoyment is expected and its absence is a performance issue.
§III The Line
The teaching is usually cited in its compressed form and the fuller version is better. The same source is explicit that a person who cannot reach joy should not be beaten with the instruction, and that the work is to find the small thing that is actually good rather than to manufacture a state.
§IV The Story
The instruction that survives best is the one about finding a single point. The teaching says that when a person can find nothing good in themselves, they should look for one small point that is genuinely there, and that finding it changes the position they are looking from.
What is distinctive is the scale. Not gratitude for everything, not perspective, not counting blessings. One point, small enough to be true.
The tradition is also clear that this is work rather than temperament, and that it is hardest and most necessary for the people least inclined to it, which is a different claim from saying it is available to everyone on demand.
§V The Science
Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory holds that positive emotions widen attention and thought-action repertoires and build durable resources over time, and the broadening effects have reasonable experimental support.
The associated positivity ratio claim, that a specific numerical ratio marks flourishing, was retracted after its mathematical basis was shown to be unsound. The broadening findings stand. The ratio does not, and it is still quoted.
Self-determination theory supplies the sport-specific route. Intrinsic motivation is supported by autonomy, competence and relatedness, and enjoyment is one of its clearest markers. A squad with no visible enjoyment is usually a squad where one of the three is missing, which makes the absence diagnostic rather than attitudinal.
§VI The Case Against
The final station in the final ring gets the objection that applies to a good deal of modern sport.
An environment where enjoyment is expected produces performed enjoyment, and performed enjoyment conceals exactly the information the absence of joy would have given you. It also punishes the athlete who is struggling twice: once for struggling and once for showing it.
The suppression evidence from the Desert Fathers ring applies directly, and the cost is measurable.
An athlete in an overtrained state, a harmful program, or the wrong sport is not failing to practice a trait. They are responding correctly. Treating the absence of joy as something to be worked on inside the person is the same error as treating acedia as a demon.
Self-determination theory locates enjoyment in autonomy, competence and relatedness, all of which are largely produced by the environment. A station that asks the athlete to practice joy is asking the wrong party.
§VII The Practice
§VIII The Deeper Block
§IX For the Coach
Read joylessness as a program signal. It is the earliest available indicator and it precedes every other measurement you have. It also costs nothing to look for.
Never require the display. Asking a squad to look more positive produces concealment and destroys your only early indicator.
Fix the need, not the attitude. Autonomy, competence and relatedness are things you build into a program. Enjoyment follows them and cannot be requested directly.
Protect the unproductive. The things athletes do in a sport for no reason are usually the first casualties of a serious block and often the reason they were there.
“Nobody has enjoyed a session in about six weeks. I am not asking anyone to cheer up. I am asking what we changed, because something did.”
§X The Turn
The tradition said find one point small enough to be true, and said in the same breath that a person who cannot find one should not be beaten with the instruction. Both halves, from the same source.
The numbers were good and the block was on schedule and nobody wanted to be there, and none of that showed up anywhere it could be seen.