Joy Under Pressure
Encanto, a French Chemist, and Joy
I’m not recording me reading the post today because I’d rather you listen to the song. The lyrics tell the story, so if you really want to go audio only, just listen and then speed read the last few paragraphs of the post. It will go fast, I promise. Putting the picture here because a blank screen is annoying, but use this link.
My daughter is a singer.
By that, I mean my daughter likes to sing…voraciously.
And by that, I mean that she inherited her father’s hilarious and slightly irritating habit of learning just one line of a song and belting it out with fervor while mumbling indecipherable noises to cover the remainder of the lyrics.
And then singing it sans music for the remainder of the day…on repeat. 🙄
It’s cute…really.
It’s not always cute, actually, but it is one surefire way I can control the mood in the car. The little one also inherited her father’s love of music, so much so that it is an instant salve for whatever ails her. So, on the way to camp yesterday morning, I played “iTunes Roulette” which would be ingenuous if there was betting involved but really just entails me hitting “Shuffle” on my All Songs list and seeing what happens.
The song (of which my daughter knows just one line 😒) that sung us to Princess Camp was Surface Pressure. If you haven’t seen Encanto, please just pause this, clear out the next 102 minutes of your life, download Disney+, and go solidify your humanity. Then, come back. Lin-Manuel Miranda explains the complexities of life, people, families, legacy, secrets, and, well, even joy far better than I could ever hope to.
Back to the car. Surface Pressure is sung by Jessica Darrow, who voices the character of Luisa Madrigal, the middle daughter of the trio of girls, and the one gifted with super human strength. She is the family’s rock, tasked with managing every heavy load.
Spoiler alert (so go do what I told you and watch the fucking movie first!) - She is also crumbling under the crushing weight she literally and figuratively carries.
Luisa is my favorite character, and Surface Pressure could be my walk out song (Yes, I’ve been watching too much Olympic coverage as of late).
I don't ask how hard the work is
Got a rough indestructible surface
Diamonds and platinum, I find 'em, I flatten 'em
I take what I'm handed, I break what's demanded
Watching Luisa’s self worth disintegrate as her super human strength diminishes elicited the most empathetic tears I’ve ever cried. I cried at her desperation, her helplessness, and, mostly, that no one else noticed how much she was carrying until she just physically couldn’t any longer.
Who am I if I can't carry it all?
If I falter
The past week, I’ve been feeling the pressure building. There’s no crisis, no emergency, no trauma. Just life. We went to visit family over the weekend, so there was the inevitable build up of packing, cooking, prepping, planning. Combine that with a half day camp for my daughter, which is the silliest thing ever. Who in the world can do their work in the 2.25 hours left after you commute to drop off and pick up your kid? I digress.
This week, my husband started a new job. A job we planned for. A job we have held space for. A job we are ecstatic about and that will work amazingly well for our family long term. But a job that requires him to be on site early in the morning at least for the first month leaving me to manage all of the garden watering, lunch packing, dog feeding, breakfast making, kid commuting stuff every day. Again, not unrealistic or unmanageable. Just…more.
Oh, and next week we are making a huge announcement at work, and everything has to be wrapped up this week so we can go live next week.
Did I mention this week is another half day camp? 😒
This probably sounds like your life. It’s not special or unique or extra in any way. BUT,
It's pressure like a drip, drip, drip that'll never stop, whoa
Pressure that'll tip, tip, tip 'til you just go pop, whoa, oh, oh
And after years of ignoring what my body is trying to tell me, I’m now fairly attuned to the sensation of the weight amassing on my shoulders. Without fail, as things get heavier, my patience falters, self care goes to shit, and finally kindness becomes criticism. I’m successfully carrying the load, yes, but at the expense of my own misery and the frustration and hurt of those around me.
Line up the dominoes, a light wind blows
You try to stop it tumbling, but on and on, it goes
I don’t know why I do this. Why everyone, including me, presumes I will take on the heavy lifting. At this point in my life, I imagine its just because that’s the way its always been. But what will happen when or if I am no longer able to? What would happen if I just didn’t want to anymore?
I often have daydreams about just stopping. Sitting down in the middle of my basement at 10:52am on a Tuesday. Not so much forgetting, but intentionally just not. doing. anything. Not letting the dogs out. Not going to pick up my daughter. Not making dinner. Not doing the laundry. Not answering emails. Not putting the dishes away. Just…not. Short for nothing.
The daydream last mere seconds, but the imagined feeling of nothingness is so real. My conscious self can watch my imagined self sit cross-legged on the floor and in this separation of church and state, I wonder how long she will actually wait there. Or if she’s really waiting at all. Is it waiting if you’re not actually doing anything? And if she’s not waiting, then what will end the nothingness? And what takes its place when the nothingness is over?
But wait, if I could shake the crushing weight of expectations
Would that free some room up for joy or relaxation, or simple pleasure?
Fourteen months after my husband’s motorcycle accident, we joined a boat club. Twenty-six months after, we bought a house on a lake in a place we had been precisely twice. I’d like to say these were calculated moves, and while they have turned out to benefit us tremendously, that’s some divine intervention because at the time they were just desperate attempts to free up some room for joy or relaxation or even simple pleasure from under the crushing weight of our existence.
We were holding it together. I was holding it together. But there was a lot of wobble. My arms were tired. His face was tired. Our daughter’s resilience was tired. We knew the load we had to carry and that continuing to hold it up was not optional. But, we needed a release valve for the pressure. A half turn to the right to let the steam shoot out until it was no longer dangerous.
When we let up the pressure, just a smidge, guess what replaced it?
Joy.
Joy has a look. Once you see it and learn its name, you can’t unsee it. It’s unmistakable. So, when I saw my husband’s face as he piloted our boat across the river, I knew. And when my daughter came running in from sledding down our acre-sized front yard, I knew.
It’s just chemistry, after all. Le Chatelier teaches us that any equation involving gasses prefers equilibrium. Pressure in such a system is caused by gas molecules hitting the sides of their container (sound familiar?), so if you increase the pressure, the system’s response will be to lean on the side of the equation that produces less molecules, ie. less stuff, bringing the pressure back in to equilibrium.
How do you counteract pressure? Less stuff to manage. More free space. More joy.
The critical point of LeChatelier’s Principle, at least as it relates to joy, is that there is no removal of the pressure. The pressure stays. It’s the adjustment to the pressure that matters. The adjustment that brings the entire system back in to equilibrium. It’s joy under pressure, not joy without pressure.
I know more than one line of Surface Pressure. In fact, I know them all, but the series of lyrics I most often belt out are these.
Give it to your sister and never wonder
If the same pressure would've pulled you under
Who am I if I don't have what it takes?
No cracks, no breaks
No mistakes, no pressure
It’s half haughty, half self-deprecating, and all constant expectation.
I’ve always wondered about the very last phrase “No pressure”. Does he mean she can’t appear to be under any pressure? Does he mean she can’t allow herself to feel the pressure? Is he being facetious after just singing an entire song about all the pressure she’s under? I don’t know, but regardless, with absolute deference to Lin-Manuel, I don’t think it’s a fair way to end the song. There will always, always be pressure. And there will always be people like myself and Luisa who believe we cannot allow ourselves to make mistakes. But if we are going to survive under that pressure, we have to free up some room for joy. And it is through and between and because of the cracks and breaks that that joy can find us.
It appears by the end of the movie that Luisa gets her strength back, mostly, at least, but she also starts getting help with all of that back breaking work. The family learns that her value is far greater than the strength of her muscles, and more importantly, she learns that it’s okay to take a break.
I’m still working on what “a break” looks like in the context of every day pressure. I don’t have the money to buy another house or the time to take on another water sport. Those breaks were extreme release valves meant for times of extreme pressure. Sitting in the middle of my basement floor indefinitely also feels extreme, but the fact that I’m having that dream means I need to do something…soon.
Joy needs some space to come in.
I don’t know how to create just a crack. I’m so afraid that allowing even a tiny crack to surface will ultimately lead me to the basement floor. But I know what happens when there’s no release on the pressure valve.
So, I’m working on cracking.
Because just knowing the cracking is what lets in the joy doesn’t do much unless I can surrender to the cracking. I have to trust the cracks.
That’s hard.
And it’s going to take longer than 102 minutes. Damnit Disney!
This is such a beautiful and insightful piece, Jess! As a fellow Luisa, I relate so strongly to this song that I too cried the first time I heard it. The pressure of being your family's rock and never showing any weakness - it's a lot! Finding a way to acknowledge the rising tension, sharing the load, and making space to allow ourselves a break are so important. Thanks for shedding light on this and starting an important conversation :)
I really enjoyed this, Jess. So much I can relate to, and so much depth to plumb. I honestly feel I need to read it again to really take it all in. Plus - Encanto! Now I want to watch that movie again. I'm actually writing about self care this week - mostly about how so many of us find it so difficult (almost impossible) to integrate meaningful self care into our lives with any kind of regularity. I'd go so far as to say it's a kind of cultural crisis. Thank you for adding such a thoughtful piece to the conversation.