It took only seconds for the forge to make the steel pipe red-hot. It took only minutes for Bruce Jarrell to hammer it roughly into the shape of a flower.

Jarrell, a transplant surgeon and president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, is also a blacksmith. The skill he honed over decades is now a respite, a 1,800-degree salve for all the day’s worries.

“There’s no music, no other people, just me,” said Jarrell from his home along the Magothy River, where he spends weekend hours in a shop turning steel into art.

“If I don’t focus, I’ll hurt myself, or screw up. It’s pretty intense.”

At a time when the headlines may feel heavier, the temperatures chillier and the holidays overwhelming, people like Jarrell say it’s possible — indeed necessary — to find joy in banging on some metal.

What preserves or restores joy is personal. Maybe it’s staring at a beautiful view. Volunteering, for sure. Family and friends, of course.

For a local nurse, it’s a run. For a beekeeper, it’s the hum from his hives. For a few Baltimore Orioles, it’s the warmth of a new four-legged friend.

Everyone needs joy, said Jason Parcover, a psychologist and associate vice president for student wellbeing at Loyola University Maryland in North Baltimore.

Parcover said it’s not selfish or indulgent to pursue it. It’s “a way to renew ourselves and reclaim a sense of life,” he said.

“Even small moments of joy — such as noticing sunlight through a window, sharing a laugh with a friend, or taking a quiet walk — remind us that beauty, love, and connection still exist alongside hardship.”

Benjamin Mosley, principal of Glenmount Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore, finds joy in the successes of his students and staff, especially since Glenmount added a fourth star this year under the state’s five-star rating system.

To keep the school shining, he needs to refuel at home. That means time with family. He said there is a special joy in watching his teen daughters grow and experience new things, such as take their first trip overseas.

Mosley also looks forward to his own annual trek to a college football game.

“There’s a group of us, childhood friends from back home,” he said. “We pick a game every year, and we road-trip in a van. It’s the cherry on top.”

Among the Orioles, joy is not a sundae but a pup cup. Several players on the professional baseball team have adopted or supported local animal shelters. According to the team, pitcher Dean Kremer and his girlfriend often foster dogs, giving them a better shot at a furever home.

Another team pitcher, Tyler Wells, said the holidays always bring him joy. This year, he and his wife Melissa experience this special kind of happiness with their baby Ava, who was born in March.

“I find joy in the things you can’t measure,” he said. “The emotions, the ability to give to others, and the ability to feel and show love for one another. Time with family and friends is priceless.”

(The rest of us are hoping a good offseason means more joy at Camden Yards come spring.)

In the meantime, in Curtis Bay, there is Filbert Street Garden, a South Baltimore nonprofit providing community resources and activities where Charles DeBarber finds delight.

Years back, DeBarber, aka Charles the Beekeeper, rehomed a single hive he found in a tree to the garden. It’s now part of a larger operation, producing honey the garden sells to support its mission.

“I was in the Army and brought home a lot of anxiety from Iraq,” he said. “No matter how anxious or sad or depressed I am, I can go down here and crack open the hives and and hear the zzzz and smell beeswax and honey.

“And there is nothing in the world that makes me calmer.”

That’s how Kate Burgin, the Walters Art Museum‘s new chief executive, feels about cooking. She taught herself by working her way through different cookbooks and hosting dinners for friends.

“The ritual of planning a menu and the rhythms of the kitchen have become a central part of my life and how I unwind,” she said. “Now I have a whole collection of well-used and dog-eared cookbooks on my shelves that I pull from when I’m planning a family meal or book club dinner.”

She now views the meals as a way for people to connect and understand each other — a vision she hopes to employ at the museum.

It’s running that helps Jessica Brennan both connect with others and be alone with her thoughts. The nurse at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson often works 12-hour shifts. And then she finds time, maybe counterintuitively, to spend more time on her feet.

She ran track in high school and returned to it as and adult. Today, she covers up to 50 miles a week when she’s marathon-training.

“You have to give yourself some grace, knowing the morning after a long shift you may not get your fastest run. But you’re still getting the physical and the mental benefits,” she said

“I never listen to music, even on a 20-mile run,” Brennan said. “I reflect and look at the scenery — and be in my thoughts.”

Other times, she runs with a group. They are mostly friends she made after moving to Baltimore for nursing school during the coronavirus pandemic, a time when it was safer to be outside. Brennan said running can make it easier to talk about hard things “because you’re not directly looking at them.”

That’s Bruce Jarrell, only looking ahead.

Though sometimes he works alongside one of his granddaughters, 13-year-old Lillie Jarrell. On a recent morning she used crayons and a paint brush to color the flower he’d just crafted from a steel tube. It was a simple finish to what has become a high-tech operation for the artistic doctor.

Several years ago, he replaced his dirty coal-fired forge with an induction one that creates an electromagnetic field inside coils to heat the metal. His source material is scrounged from various sources, which is then banged into shapes. Also a trained engineer, Jarrell wields a pneumatic hammer that he and a friend built themselves.

His intricate designs were first inspired by the intricate needlepoint of his mother and later by flea market finds. And the resulting art now lives around his own home, the university’s Baltimore campus and in the pages of a book he wrote.

He often spreads the joy by forging items for special university donors or medals for achieving professors, though much of the high heat is used just to make art for himself.

As his students would say, that’s fire.