Having Joy and Being Happy

"Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are." 

-- Marianne Williamson

I heard a sermon shortly before I left Cape Town about having joy in your life... what it means to carry joy with you and not let life steal it away.  I also heard Cindy Wells -- (a woman who has served many roles in my family's lives -- from being my dad's Sunday school teacher when he was a kid to being the administrator in all the Thompson kids' middle school to being a source of support for us since my dad died) -- talk about having her joy stolen when her husband passed away a few years ago and that she is slowly gaining it back.  I didn't quite understand it at the time, but I think I'm wrapping my head around it now.

It made me think about the difference between having joy and being happy.

First, take a look at the parts of speech of each word (yes, I know I'm a nerd) -- joy is a noun and happy is an adjective.  Nouns are things, you can carry, hold, earn, lose, and even sometimes touch.  Adjectives are subjective, fleeting, and reflect a state of temporary being.

Even consider that in English, we only have verb to reflect a person's state of being (the "to be" verb: is, am, are, etc -- I am happy, for example).  In Spanish (and I presume a few other languages as well), there are two verbs for "to be" -- ser and estar.  Ser reflects a permanent state of being (gender, personality traits, physical characteristics etc), whereas estar is used to reflect a temporary state of being (how you feel and where you are show when you use the verb estar).

Okay beyond nouns and adjectives -- it is impossible to really be happy all the time -- consider all the ways that people can become sad, anxious, etc.  A nice meal or sitting on the beach makes me happy, but getting sick makes me sad.... happiness is generally fleeting.  It's a descriptive term for a temporary state of being. Life gets in the way of being happy a lot of the time.  This is something I've been forced to think about more in the past few months.

Something that is perhaps less fleeting than happiness is building up and holding on to joy.  Joy is a noun.  You can carry it with you wherever you go.  I think joy is more of a perspective, a way of looking at things, a personal fulfillment that is more permanent than temporary happiness.  It's yours and no one else's. It can be shared and it doesn't diminish. Joy comes from being confident in who you are, what you believe, and the relationships with people around you.  Joy has a friend (another noun) that can be possessed -- peace (but that's for another day).

Joy can also be stolen from you and affected by life, but not as easily as happiness.

I've thought about this a lot on our trip here in India... about ways to fill up my joy instead of riding the waves of happiness and sadness.  I feel like a lot of my joy was stripped from me a few months ago clear out of the blue and it's taken a while to build it up again, but once it's built up on a firm foundation I think it will be even harder for it to be stolen.  I also think that recognizing the value of joy and that it is a thing to be treasured, built up, and protected makes it less likely to be stolen.

Lastly, my joy was affected because my dad suddenly passed away -- but the source of the joy that I had before -- my relationship with my dad, the amazing ways that he affected my life, taught me, guided me, and loved me -- have not been lost.  Reflecting on this restores my joy even though it brings some temporary sadness.

Strive for joy... and when you find it, share it!

"I have told you these things, that My joy and delight may be in you and that your joy and gladness may be of full measure and complete and overflowing" -John 15:11