The city invited me to ride on its inaugural hot-air balloon flight. We headed to the local high school fields at a chilly dawn, and the brand new balloon slowly woke as air and heat gave it shape. The burners thundered, and the basket rocked beneath our feet. Then the ground loosened its hold. Gravity softened. The familiar sense of weight, not just of bodies but of weeks and headlines and accumulating worry, lifted just enough to notice.

I rode in the balloon with the assistant city manager, someone I had worked alongside for years before I was elected, but one of the first public moments I had as a councilor was standing together at a vigil for the city's first police officer to die in the line of duty. A cold night, bowed heads, a community trying to absorb a loss that resisted language. That vigil taught me early what public service often requires: standing in the presence of grief without turning away.

Floating above the city with her felt quietly surreal. Not an escape from that reality, but a widening of it.

From above, streets straightened into lines, neighborhoods softened into patterns, and cars crept along like bits of color. Distance did not erase the world's troubles, but it altered their scale, reminding me that perspective is not denial. It is survival.

Below us, dogs barked, sharp and insistent, the yelps rising and fading as we drifted overhead. The balloonist explained that they could hear a pitch from the propane burners that we could not, a frequency beyond human range. Something in the air unsettled them even though it left us undisturbed.

The idea stayed with me. There are always signals some of us cannot hear. There are always alarms sounding beyond our perception, while others move through life with nervous systems permanently tuned to them.

This week, among the relentless stack of headlines, was the story of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents taking a five-year-old into detention. It is the kind of news that arrives quietly and yet reverberates through the body all the same. Some people move through the world buffered from that frequency. Others exist inside it, their days shaped by vigilance, fear, and uncertainty.

In moments like these, joy can feel inappropriate. Delight can feel like betrayal. There is a temptation to believe that if we allow ourselves wonder or lightness, we are failing those who are suffering.

Floating above the city, wrapped in cold air and early light, I began to understand the opposite.

Despair is not moral clarity. It is depletion. It narrows the imagination, drains the will, and convinces us that numbness is wisdom. Over time, it makes cruelty easier to tolerate. In that sense, joy becomes resistance. It is a refusal to let the world grind our hearts into something smaller and harder than they were meant to be.

Up there, suspended between sky and desert, I felt the quiet defiance of choices we make: to look, to breathe, to notice color and wind and the slow choreography of shadows crossing the land. None of those choices solved anything or softened headlines. But it does remind me what we are trying to protect in the first place: the fragile, fleeting experience of being alive, aware, and open.

Hot air balloons are, at their core, improbable. Fabric, rope, and flame coaxed into temporary flight. Their magic lies in that tension between fragility and lift. Perhaps joy works the same way. Not strong enough to repair the world, but resilient enough to keep us rising just above the worst of its gravity, long enough to gather strength.

When we landed, the city rushed back in. The weight returned. The news still waited. The world remained, in many ways, on fire. I stepped out steadier than I had climbed in, carrying with me the memory of that quiet elevation. In times like ours, joy is not indulgence; it keeps us human, and it reminds us what we are fighting for.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at [email protected]. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Raychel Sanner at Unsplash