JOSEPH HAD ARRIVED AT A STATE of spiritual maturity in which stressful emotions such as anger, sadness, and disappointment no longer arose—or arose so rarely that he could count the years between episodes. (“Seizures,” Asenath would call them.) His default state of calm was extremely steady, and he could depend on it from day to day, from hour to hour. It was an inner equipoise that was unaffected by pleasure or pain, gain or loss, praise or blame. He was detached from events in the sense that they no longer disturbed his mind, but this detachment was not a mode of separation; it was a mode of freedom. It allowed him to deeply connect with people, whether they were in trouble or at peace. No one ever experienced Joseph as aloof.
Equanimity is sometimes thought of as a dry or cold state of being, devoid of feeling. It’s not. Joseph’s inner life was filled with passionate emotions: deep love for his family, intense aesthetic pleasure, the joy of playing with or against Asenath’s nimble wit, wholehearted devotion to Pharaoh and to Joseph’s new country, the thrill of letting his intelligence gallop through an intellectual challenge, fulfillment in difficult work well done, and always, throughout the day, gratitude for the generosity of the given world. When an emotion surged through him and his heart beat faster—as when he was making love with Asenath, or when he sat beside her during the birth of each son, on the edge of attention, filled with compassion for her pain—he was always, at the same time, in touch with the seemingly bottomless reservoir of calm that lay beneath it all.
During the famine, in spite of all the human misery that was constantly being reported to him, he never questioned the goodness of the vast intelligence that was the source of everything, because he had questioned it thoroughly while he was in the pit, so many years before—had submitted it to a doubt that was like a consuming fire. His trust had become second nature, as intimate as breathing.
Though he didn’t yet know it, his brothers’ arrival was about to stir powerful emotions in him: rejoicing, love, fulfillment, compassion, tears of pure resonance with no sorrow in them. But in the midst of all these emotions, he would always remain the observer, the listener—amused, serene, both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.