The Joy That Wasn’t Earned

“Joy caught me off guard.”

That line didn’t sound rehearsed. It sounded remembered. It didn’t land with drama—it landed with silence.

In the middle of describing his 2019 return to East Africa, Sam Idra was asked:

“What emotion caught you off guard while reconnecting with people in East Africa—and how did you process it?”

What surfaced wasn’t grief, or anger, or even relief. It was joy.

And that answer cracked open more than memory. It exposed a fracture in perception.

In America, joy is an outcome—something to earn, prove, or display. But in East Africa, Sam found it waiting. Already there. Already real. Joy wasn’t something people pursued. It was something they embodied.

People who had almost nothing—no running water, no electricity, no financial comfort—held joy without effort. No filters. No performance. Just being.

For Sam, that wasn’t just unfamiliar. It was confronting.

Because in that moment, he realized he couldn’t remember the last time joy had come uninvited.

That’s what makes this moment so important.

It wasn’t just about culture or travel or contrast. It was about recognition. About the dissonance that occurs when you touch something true—and realize you’d forgotten how to hold it.

Joy didn’t ask Sam for credentials. It didn’t care about degrees or status. It didn’t need to be chased.

It just was.

And when he saw it—in others, in the air, in himself—he recognized how much he had lost by replacing joy with ambition.

That question wasn’t about emotion.

It was about remembrance.