Happiness, Joy and Thankfulness: Part II

This thinking about happiness has also led me to thoughts about joy. For me, happiness and joy are not the same.

Dictionary.com gives these synonyms for joy: rapture, bliss, pleasure. It gives these for happiness: pleasure, joy, exhilaration, bliss, contentedness, delight, enjoyment, satisfaction.

It continues to say: “Happiness . . . implies an active or passive state of pleasure or pleasurable satisfaction. Happiness results from the possession or attainment of what one considers good.”

This seems to sum up my thoughts on the differences of happiness and joy quite well: happiness is something attained, realized, sought and achieved. Happiness is a result of something. You are happy because something happened.

Joy, on the other hand, is organic. It just happens. It may spring from happiness, but it is not caused by anything. Joy is a blessing. Joy is the purer form of emotion. Joy is happiness to the 3,000th power – and then some.

Joy is the rarer of the two emotions; at least it is for me. In fact, I’d say that’s the case for most people. To experience anything on such a level requires being on such a level more often than I am. Don’t get me wrong; there are some people who reside on the “joy” level all the time. (One of my girlfriends in college was this way; she bubbled over with joy all the time. When she was having an “off” day, she was still obviously happy. Her joy always returned to her quickly.)

The question becomes: by allowing yourself to be happy more often, do you open yourself to experiencing the thrill of joy more often? Do you raise yourself to a new level, where perhaps the jump to joy is less difficult than perhaps your current, normal, everyday mental state?

During the holiday, I’ve been very thankful for the joy and the happiness I’ve been experiencing over the past week. I’ve been thankful for the house I own, for the car I drive (that continues to be in great shape despite almost 190K miles), for the job I have, for so many wonderful people in my life, for the journey that I’m on.

I hope you’ve taken the time to recognize that for which you are thankful recently. I hope that you’re thankful for certain people being in your life and that you’ve had the guts and taken the opportunity to tell them. I hope that you find happiness in sharing that thankfulness, and maybe, just maybe, find joy in such an act.

I know I do.