Joy can strengthen our resolve, help us unlock creativity, and bolster our resilience. In Fix’s Joy Issue, we explore the importance and power of finding joy in the face of grief, anger, and a changing climate.
Jiaying Zhao had never seen a wildfire until she moved to Vancouver. When the cognitive psychologist woke up one morning to find the city wreathed in haze, she felt a visceral shock. “The sky was orange,” she recalls, and going about her day felt “like constantly being in a smoky barbecue.” Yet in the decade that she’s worked in British Columbia, such extreme weather events have become a regular occurrence.
Last November, for instance, while driving to the University of British Columbia, where she works as the Canada Research Chair in Behavioral Sustainability, she passed block after block of downed trees. Power lines dangled, blocking the road. “At first I thought someone was shooting a movie,” Zhao says. In fact, not a half hour before, an extremely rare tornado had touched down on campus. It was one of three natural disasters British Columbia experienced last year, joining a heat dome that killed hundreds of peo... Read more