My Cup Runneth Over: Reflections on Joy and the World Cup

A few days ago, I heard a story that I haven't been able to shake.

It was about families in Gaza gathering to watch Egypt play in the World Cup. Amid unimaginable loss and uncertainty, people came together around televisions and phone screens. For ninety minutes, children cheered. Neighbors celebrated. Hope found a place to breathe and unabashed joy bubbled up.

I haven't stopped thinking about it.

Perhaps because, in about two hours, my daughter Beatrice and I will make our way back to our favorite little bar here in Rome to watch Spain play in the World Cup Final.

For the past month, this has become one of our rituals.

Every time Spain has played, we've been there.

The owner greets us with a smile. The familiar faces are beginning to feel like friends. Today they've reserved us a table. There are commemorative T-shirts waiting. The excitement has been building for days.

I can already picture it. People spilling onto the sidewalks. The nervous anticipation before kickoff. The collective gasp after a missed opportunity. The explosion of joy if Spain scores. Complete strangers embracing as though they've known one another for years.

And it has me wondering...

What is it about moments like these?

The Observation

It struck me that what I was looking forward to wasn't simply the match; it was the gathering. The anticipation that quietly builds throughout the day as everyone knows they're heading toward the same moment. The ritual of returning to a familiar place, seeing familiar faces, ordering the same drink, slipping into the same conversations before a single ball has been kicked. It was the feeling of belonging to something larger than myself.

For ninety minutes, the usual boundaries seem to soften. Age, nationality, language, profession—they all become a little less important. We aren't strangers occupying the same space. We're participants in the same experience.

And perhaps that's what we're really seeking: not just entertainment or even victory, but belonging. We're longing for those rare moments when it feels natural to celebrate alongside people we may have only just met. When cheering together somehow reminds us that we belong together.

I suspect you've experienced it too. Perhaps at a concert where thousands of voices somehow become one. Around a holiday table that grows a little larger each year. At a graduation ceremony. A neighborhood gathering. A community fundraiser. Even sitting around a campfire with people who, only hours earlier, were strangers. The occasion itself is almost secondary. What we remember is how it felt to be there together.

The World

My thoughts keep returning to that story.

Not because it stood in contrast to the celebration I was anticipating here in Rome, but because it revealed something profoundly human.

Even in the midst of unimaginable hardship, people instinctively reached for one another. They gathered. They hoped. They allowed themselves, if only for a little while, to be carried by something larger than the circumstances surrounding them. That distinction feels important. 

Joy didn't erase suffering. It existed alongside it.

Perhaps that is one of humanity's quietest strengths: our remarkable capacity to hold grief in one hand and hope in the other. To make room for laughter without denying heartbreak. To celebrate a moment without pretending everything is okay. Maybe that's why these shared experiences matter so much. They remind us that, regardless of where we live or what we carry, we are drawn toward the same things: connection, belonging, and the chance to breathe a little more deeply in the company of others.

For a few precious moments, we remember not only what divides us, but what has always united us.

The Human Spirit

Perhaps joy is more than a fleeting emotion. Perhaps it is a resource. Something we draw upon when life feels uncertain. Something that steadies us, strengthens us, and reminds us that we are still capable of feeling fully alive.

Joy does not ask us to deny what is difficult. It does not erase grief, repair injustice, or make hardship disappear. But it can interrupt despair. It can create a small opening through which energy, courage, and possibility return. And when joy is shared, its power seems to multiply.

A cheer travels through a room. A smile passes between strangers. For a moment, people who have little else in common find themselves connected by the same hope, the same anticipation, the same release.

Perhaps this is why belonging matters so deeply. To belong is to be reminded that we do not have to carry everything alone. It is to feel ourselves held, however briefly, within something larger than our individual circumstances. In those moments, connection becomes more than comfort. It becomes a source of strength.

Perhaps belonging itself is a form of resilience. Not because it shields us from pain, but because it helps us remain open to life in the presence of it. It reminds us who we are beneath the fear, the uncertainty, and the burdens we carry. We are still people who gather, who hope, and who find ways to celebrate. We are people who reach for one another and, in doing so, help one another keep going.

Perhaps that's why I haven't been able to stop thinking about that story. On the surface, it was about football, but it wasn't really about football at all. It was about people choosing, even if only for ninety minutes, to gather instead of withdraw. To cheer instead of despair. To remember, if only briefly, what it feels like to belong to something larger than themselves.

The more I sat with it, the more I found myself questioning something I have long assumed to be true. How often do we treat joy as though it is the reward? As though it is something we earn after the work is finished, after the uncertainty has passed, after life finally becomes manageable.

We tell ourselves that one day—when things settle down, when the diagnosis changes, when the children are grown, when the finances improve, when the world feels less uncertain—then we'll have room for joy. But perhaps we've misunderstood its role all along. Perhaps joy was never meant to be the reward waiting at the end of resilience. Or perhaps it is one of the very things that makes resilience possible.

That thought has stayed with me. Because when I think about those families in Gaza, I don't see people escaping reality. I see people refusing to surrender something essential to being human. And when I think about the thousands of strangers who have filled cafés, bars, living rooms, and city squares throughout this World Cup, I don't see fans watching a match. I see communities remembering how to gather, celebrate, and hope together.

Maybe that is why these moments matter far more than we often realize. Not because they change our circumstances, but because they change us. They remind us that beneath our responsibilities, our grief, our ambitions, our worries, and our endless to-do lists, there is still a part of us that longs to laugh, to celebrate, to connect, and to feel fully alive. And perhaps that is not a distraction from life; perhaps it is the foundation of it.

Joy is not a luxury we enjoy after life becomes easier. It is one of the ways we become strong enough to meet life as it is.

When we protect moments of joy, we are not pretending suffering doesn't exist. We are protecting the very parts of ourselves that suffering can never fully take away. Perhaps that is what resilience has looked like all along. Not hardening ourselves against life, but softening it, continually finding our way back to one another.

The Invitation

As I think about this evening, I realize that what I'm looking forward to isn't simply ninety minutes of football. It's returning to a place where, for a little while, strangers become neighbors. Where generations gather around a common hope and where languages become secondary to smiles. Here the weight of the world doesn't disappear, but somehow feels a little lighter because we are carrying it together.

Those moments matter. Not because they change the world overnight, but because they change the people who continue living in it tomorrow. Maybe that's the quiet invitation hidden within this story. If something as simple as gathering around a football match can awaken joy, connection, belonging, and hope—even in places marked by profound suffering—perhaps these experiences are not incidental to a meaningful life. Perhaps they are essential.

We spend so much of our lives trying to become stronger, more resilient, more capable of navigating whatever tomorrow brings. But what if resilience isn't built solely through enduring hardship? Maybe it is also cultivated by intentionally returning, again and again, to the people, places, and practices that remind us who we are. Returning to conversations that leave us feeling more ourselves than when we arrived, rituals that quietly anchor us, communities where we feel welcomed rather than evaluated, and moments that invite laughter to return without apology.

Those experiences are not distractions from life; they are part of what equips us to live it well.

The Final Whistle Blew

A few hours after I wrote those words, the final whistle blew. For just a heartbeat there was silence. Then the Highlander Bar in Rome erupted. People were hugging complete strangers as drinks were raised into the air. Flags appeared from nowhere, and voices that had been holding their breath for ninety minutes suddenly found themselves singing in jubilation.

I looked over at Beatrice and smiled. Yes, because Spain had won, but even more because I realized that, over the past four weeks, we had become part of something much bigger than a football match.

Week after week, we had returned to the same little bar. The owner greeted us with a smile. The bartenders began to recognize us. Familiar faces slowly became familiar people. Without ever planning it, one match at a time, one conversation at a time, one shared celebration at a time, we had quietly become part of a community.

It reminded me that the richest parts of life are rarely manufactured in grand moments. More often, they are built through ordinary moments we choose to return to.

And maybe that's the real invitation. Not to watch more football or chase more extraordinary experiences, but to become more intentional about creating ordinary moments that allow joy to find us. Because joy has a remarkable way of multiplying when it is shared.

So maybe the question we should ask ourselves isn't whether we need to develop more resilience, but whether we are intentionally creating enough opportunities to experience the things that make resilience possible. Might that not change everything?

Ask yourself,

Where do you come most alive?

Who brings out your laughter?

What rituals reconnect you to hope?

What communities remind you that you belong?

And what small step could you take this week to experience a little more of them?

Because joy was never meant to wait for a better life. It has been quietly helping us build one all along.

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Jeneen Masih writes about the human foundations of meaningful lives — offering accessible insight for sophisticated thinkers.