Happiness vs Joy

Off to see the endocrine doctor in Milwaukee for my semi-annual poke, prod and analyze session. Hopefully no lecture this time, since I followed orders! :) More on that when I get back. And more on last night's show, as well. For now, on to another topic that has sat for a couple of days.



Monday was one of those days where so many nice things happened, it was hard not to be happy. :)

I mean, I was down to goal weight again (after getting sloppy with my eating habits last week.) That made me happy.

Then, I found out that I won tickets to a sold-out concert! That made me happy.

When I went for a run at noon, I set a new personal best for a mile, and felt like I could easily keep going (and might have, but also had walked down to the track for another mile round trip, so.. saved a little for the next day.) That made me happy.

Plus, on the way home, it was a perfect Spring day after loads of rainy stormy weather - 74 degrees and sunny, with a nice breeze and clouds that looked like tufts of cotton poking through an azure pillow. That made me happy.

So I started wondering..

If I had to differentiate between happiness and joy, how would I do it? (without resorting to a dictionary...)

I guess I'd say that happiness is a positive, heart-lifting emotion that is very reactive to, and dependent on, the circumstances of the moment.

Joy, on the other hand, is a positive, heart-lifting emotional *state* that persists regardless of the circumstances of the moment.

Or at least that's how they seem to me. Not so different in feel, but in.. duration? Happiness is a disposable good, but joy a durable good, maybe. Like bags of ice in a cooler, versus a refrigerator. Hm.

I was aware on Monday of the presence of happiness. But I also was aware of the fleeting, temporal nature of it. And, as I walked, I inquired within as to whether or not I was aware of joy. I was not. They really are different.

But I also got the distinct impression that if this happiness continued long enough... it might codify into joy. Maybe.

Does it work like that, I wonder? Is happiness like gelatin or like pudding that, if you stop stirring it, will "set up" after a while and turn into joy?

If you have a preponderance of happy circumstances and events in your life, for a long enough stretch of time... if life is really, really good for quite a while... can that create a joyful state? A state that will persist when the circumstances take a turn for the worse, and sustain you until they turn back again?

Maybe it's like repeated applications of fertilizer to a field or a lawn. Can treatments change the essential soil chemistry if done often enough and long enough? I don't know.

So I think back on when circumstances in my life turned for the worse several years ago. There was no enduring state of joy to sustain me, so I crumbled.

Does that mean that before the "turn", there were not enough truly happy moments strung together for me to build into joy? Perhaps so.

Or maybe.. joy comes from some place else. And I hadn't discovered where. I don't have an answer to that. I would think that I might have learned it after all this time on earth.

But then again, it's listed as a "fruit of the Spirit" in Galatians 5:22-23. Hm. I wrote about that not long ago, didn't I?

Maybe there's a clue there. ;)

And maybe something's different now than it was before. :)

It sure feels like joy is at least within the realm of possibility now. But time (and the next downturn in circumstances) will tell the tale.