Travis and I seriously needed something soothing and pretty to watch before bed this week, so we started a nature show — The Secret Lives of Animals, narrated by Hugh Bonneville, on Apple TV.

I was scrolling through our queues, looking for something calm, and stumbled upon this program. “How about we lose ourselves in ecological wonders?” I suggested. Travis replied, “As long as there’s no death.” The question of who’s going to eat whom is ever present with animals in the wild. But this was rated G and recommended for kids 7 and up, so I figured it couldn’t be too vicious. In fact, it’s lovely.

In the first episode, “Leaving Home,” a baby seal is reunited with his mother, a lone elephant finds a welcoming herd, a wood mouse creates trail markers to navigate a dangerous expanse of grassland, a basilisk lizard runs on water, and a killifish backflips across dry land on her way to a new habitat.

This last critter was particularly amazing. Evidently, about ten percent of this species of fish does this. The majority remain where they’re born, in overcrowded stream pools, competing for limited food. But one in ten will vault out of the water, propelling themselves with powerful tail muscles, leaping across earth and rock to find a more commodious home. Sometimes, they travel hundreds of yards in such a manner, which is a long way for a little fish. Because gills don’t work out of water, the killifish had to evolve a unique way of breathing — developing blood vessels in her tail that are extremely close to the surface of the skin — so close that her blood can be oxygenated directly from the air. This nutty little fish can breathe through her tail for up to fifteen freaking hours.

I identify with the killifish. That is, I mean, I want to. I’d like to follow her example. I’ve been feeling like a fish out of water this week. Gasping. Thinking, “How the hell did we get here? We can’t go on like this. This isn’t how government is supposed to work, it’s not how people are supposed to be.”

And yet — as much as it seems like this can’t be it — it is, indeed, it. This is it and here we are.

We’ve propelled ourselves, for a mess of convoluted reasons, into a situation that just feels wrong. But we’ve got to keep going. I don’t know if that’ll mean accessing heretofore unrealized reserves of strength with which we will find ourselves leaping heroically forward, or evolving quickly so that we can breathe through our tails. I do know that we can’t stop.

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Poet Toi Derricotte wrote: “Joy is a form of resistance.”

This quote has been passed around lately, and I’ve been gnawing at it, trying it on. I recognize that my knee-jerk response, when I am resisting some reality, tends to be almost entirely negative: “No! This is bullshit, and I won’t accept, validate, normalize, or participate in it.” Which is perfectly appropriate sometimes. It’s fine, as far as it goes. “No” is a complete sentence.

Unless it strands us out of our element, gasping for air, like a killifish on a dry rock midway through our journey. Stuck in our denial of reality, paralyzed by our refusal of it.

To keep going, I usually need something more than “No.” My ticket onward is what I’m saying “yes” to.

Approaching resistance not just as a negation or refusal of the conditions and circumstances that I won’t abide, but as a confirmation and declaration of who I am, all that I stand for, and what I can consciously choose. That could be joy, peace, compassion, kindness, creativity, beauty, love… We don’t have to pick just one. I do think I’m going to let JOY guide me for a while.

Joy not instead of these conditions, because these conditions are in fact what we’ve got to work with. I don’t think it’s exactly in spite of these conditions, either, because “spite” isn’t real joyful. It seems like it’s got to be in and through these conditions. Choosing joy with open eyes, hearts, and minds.

Right now, in my life as it is, in this world as it is, there are plenty of places and ways that I can see Joy already blooming. (Also lots of love, hope, peace, kindness, compassion, and strength). Through the complicated mix of it all, I can choose Joy. In the uncertainty of it all, I can create Joy for myself and my communities.

Again, not somewhere else, but here. Not someone else, but me. Not something else, but this. Not an avoidance or a coverup. But rather a recognition that everything, literally everything, is an opportunity for us to step more fully into our soulful destiny.

I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, January 26, at 10:00am. With the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew

©2025 Drew Groves