All About Joy. Bring it on!
I've been thinking about JOY. What it is. How we get more of it. Why we need it – especially as we emerge into our post career lives.
I started my exploration because I kept hearing variations on the desire “to find the thing that brings me joy”. I got curious about what joy meant to others: if it was similar to my experience of joy. I also wondered about the relationship between joy and happiness, and whether when someone says they want to find the thing that brings them joy, they really mean happiness.
Author C.S. Lewis once described joy this way: “real joy … jumps under one’s ribs and tickles down one’s back and makes one forget meals and keeps one (delightedly) sleepless o’ nights”. He went on to add, “…one second of joy is worth 12 hours of pleasure”.
That's close to how I think of joy even if it's not quite how I experience it. It’s different than happiness because it’s momentary, fleeting, an aroused state that can’t be sustained for very long no matter how you try. Whereas I think of happiness as more long lasting – for many a constant underlying state that can persist even in challenging times, buoying resilience.
Opening Yourself to Joy
Intuitively it seems that having more joy in our lives must contribute to greater happiness, so how do we get more? To me it’s about opening yourself up to receiving joy:
Opening your eyes to what’s interesting and/or beautiful in your surroundings;
Opening your ears to the sounds of nature, of music, of voices talking or laughing, even the discords and harmonies of the city;
Opening your mind to process what you see, hear and otherwise absorb in a new way;
Opening your heart.
And then savouring it when joy happens and giving in to the urge to share it. A friend of mine talks about recognizing Joy Bubbles when they occur.
I’m not saying any of that is 'easy-peasy' if it's a new way of being for you. The work comes in trying, building new habits, new synapses, saying YES to new experiences so you gradually build awareness of the essence of what makes you truly joyful. Once you nail it, the motivation to add/invite more of that into your life and reap the many benefits of joy may be simply impossible to resist. One hopes anyway.
Surprised by Joy
William Wordsworth begins his poem Surprised by Joy, with this:
What a great description of the impulse to share the experience of joy with someone else who will understand what gave us joy and who we think will also be uplifted by it.
These are the times I pick up my phone to text or call someone to tell them about the amazing thing that just happened. Or I take a picture if it’s something I’ve seen so I can hold on to the experience and share the visual. But the best! is when you experience mutual joy with someone else about the same thing in real time. The shared memory can be experienced over and over again.
The rest of Wordsworth’s poem is actually quite sad because the person he wants to share his joy with is dead, he’s grieving their loss, and joy seems inappropriate. No doubt many of us have been there. It speaks to joy’s ability to sneak up on us even in difficult circumstances when we’re most vulnerable and be, at once, an elixir and an aggravator.
I wonder if, for many, joy may have become less available as they matured into adulthood and became fully occupied with all of life’s concerns. It’s not that potentially joyous moments didn’t happen, they just weren’t seen, might have been minimized, not given their due, or even subconsciously blocked. I recall many times in my life when I bemoaned a lack of true joy while discounting the small “bubbles of joy” as too insignificant to matter or somehow inappropriate.
Thankfully, joy is always there ready to be rediscovered when we’re ready to let it in. Perhaps this is why in our post-career lives the wish to “find the thing that brings me joy” or focus on the things that we know make us joyful, is such a prevalent aspiration. Suddenly, we have the time and freedom to go there. We may also care less about what others think now that we’ve left our work culture behind and, thus, feel emotionally safer to discard the armour.
Whatever the stimulus, there are good reasons to let joy in every day.
Why We Need Joy in Our Lives
Research suggests that…
Joy can broaden our perspective, allowing us to see beyond immediate challenges to a brighter horizon. That sounds like something that could contribute to a more positive mindset generally. In fact, researchers think joy may positively affect our thoughts about the future.
This is important as we launch into our lives post career. A broad perspective and positive outlook help us envision and take advantage of the possibilities and opportunities available to us in the next phase of life.
With respect to behaviour, joy can inspire us to play, expand our curiosity, and connect with others.
Finding your desired path post career can be more of a meandering exploration than a straight line. The ability to be curious, play at new things and say ‘yes’ to new experiences makes for a richer journey full of fun. What’s more, you’ll be more likely to eventually find a place you want to settle for a while, if not forever.
Connecting with others on your journey by expanding your social network, “finding your tribe”, or otherwise building community is sure better for us than loneliness as we age. Simply sharing your own moments of joy may the start to accessing the many benefits, including shared joy, of time spent with people whose company you enjoy.
Joy shortens bad moods and helps us get over them more quickly.
I’ll hazard a guess that few of us want to spend our time in a negative state for very long regardless of the stage of life we’re in. Unfortunately, in making the transition to retirement, many people experience very negative emotions caused by any number of things that sometimes devolves into paralyzing depression. Knowing that even small moments of joy can contribute to make that bumpy road shorter, being open to joy might be the one thing you can do when everything else seems too much to begin.
Deeply felt experiences of joy can increase creativity, knowledge, and resilience.
When I’m feeling a bit down, a bit bored or just tired for no good reason, being ‘surprised by joy” can get my creative juices flowing again, lift my mood and energize me. It works the other way too. Engaging in a creative activity, can bring joy along with it when an idea turns into something worth a little celebration. I’m not sure if joy makes me more creative but it certainly motivates me to try and in the trying, I often gain new knowledge.
As far as resilience is concerned, being open to joy helps us get through tough times and, by all accounts, there will likely be more need for resilience before there is less. Bolstering resilience by embracing joy will help us thrive rather than just survive to the very end of our lives however long they may be.
Let Joy Find You
This brief exploration of joy tells me that looking for the thing that brings you joy may not be the best quest since joy comes so unprompted, weakens to simple pleasure with every repetition of a once joyful experience, and never lasts but a few moments. Instead, let’s let joy find us. Let it surprise us when we least expect it and full heartedly revel in it. Let it point us to what might bring us longer lasting happiness and possibly a sense of our purpose.
Sources:
Unseen CS Lewis letter defines his notion of joy, Alison Flood, The Guardian, Dec 9, 2014.
How to Feel More Joy Every Day, Hilary Jacobs Hendel, LCSW, Psychology Today, May 10, 2021.
How does joy feel?; Saundra Schrock, December 13, 2021, Levelhead Blog.
