Two Paths to Joy
In response to Dancing Elephants prompt 14 of 52
“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is fleeting. It is a product of the senses. We taste our favorite foods and feel happiness. We put our feet up at the end of a long walk, and feel happiness. We snuggle beneath a thick comforter on a cold day and feel happiness.
Joy, on the other hand, comes from within. We may feel joy that we are able to provide a meal that nourishes those we love. We may feel joy that we have a purpose greater than ourselves, and that our actions contribute to its success. We may feel joy simply by sitting silently and witnessing the grandeur of creation.
Joy comes from deciding on a worldview, our place within that world, and a value judgment of whether that place is good or bad. Our senses may lead to a constant roller coaster ride of happiness and unhappiness. But our internal compass points steadily toward one setting in the range of misery to joy.
Path #1 — Learning Young
When I was very young, a child in the single digits, my overwhelming emotional states were boredom and frustration. It seemed that, no matter what I wanted to do, I did not have either the skills or capacity to do it. As a result, I often retreated to books. In those worlds, I could be someone who had the skills and capacity to get things done.
Moreover, in books, I could find a purpose. The protagonists of the stories I read always had a meaningful goal that was bigger than themselves. At the time, I was fond of Arthurian legends, and tales of The Knights of the Round Table. I also enjoyed tales of Robin Hood and even Sherlock Holmes. (That wasn’t all I read, by a long shot. Those were the ones I obsessively reread, over and over again.)
Then, I happened to read something that completely changed my point of view. I came across a quote from Abraham Lincoln:
“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
An explosion of possibility
This quote was like an explosion going off in my young mind. I realized that I was choosing to be bored and frustrated. But I had different choices available to me.
Why was I feeling bored? It wasn’t that I lacked things to do. In fact, if I ever made the mistake of telling my mother I was bored, she would rapidly load me down with more chores than I could ever hope to accomplish.
The problem was that none of those activities felt in any way more meaningful than any other. What I actually lacked was a sense of purpose.
Why was I feeling frustrated? Because my capabilities were outpaced by my desires. If I could develop my capabilities, I would not feel so frustrated.
When looked at in this light, the answer seemed blindingly obvious. If I wanted to be happy — if I wanted to make up my mind to be happy — I needed a sense of purpose and greater capabilities.
Lifelong learning and purpose
The desire to increase my capabilities has led to a lifelong love of learning. But it is not learning for learning’s sake. While I’m okay with learning some theory in order to better understand context, I generally want to learn those things which have practical usage. I want to be able to do something with what I learn.
In other words, I want to increase my capabilities, not just my knowledge.
Given the books I was reading, it’s no surprise that the purpose I decided upon for myself was to increase hope. I wanted to help people feel hopeful. Hope that good would triumph over evil, that wrongs would be righted, and that brave heart and bold action would carry the day.
Note that it was a very realistic goal for a young child. I certainly didn’t expect to be able to do any of those things. That was left to the all-powerful adults. But I could try to increase hope that those things would, in fact, be done. That was within the realm of things that were possible for a child to do.
Did this lead to joy?
These few simple decisions have led to a lifetime of joy. By keeping in mind Lincoln’s quotation, I have developed the habit of choosing how I look at things. I do not immediately jump to one interpretation, but consider all of the many possible interpretations there could be, and which is most consistent with my overall worldview.
My worldview is simple: The universe loves me and wants me to be happy. Any situation, no matter how painful it may be in the moment, is ultimately there for my greatest happiness. If I am not seeing how it means that it is a learning opportunity.
What is my place in that worldview? I try to increase the amount of hope in the world, both my own and others. If the universe loves me and wants me to be happy, then it wants me to be successful in increasing the amount of hope in the world. So that others can also recognize that the universe loves them and wants them to be happy.
My value judgment of my place in the world is that it is a good one.
And thus, I experience joy. Despite various setbacks, my overwhelming emotional state ever since has been one of deep and profound joy.
Path #2 — Coming to Joy in Maturity
I was lucky in that I had a background that lent itself to a positive worldview. My husband was not so lucky. When he was 2 years old, he contracted a rare illness that required lengthy hospitalization. To be able to diagnose him, the doctors had to repeatedly draw blood, requiring someone to hold or strap him down, while a needle was inserted into the vein in his neck.
At 2 years of age, there is no way to rationalize that. All you know is that you’re being hurt, again and again, while the people who are supposed to protect you look on and make no move to stop it. They seem, in fact, to be encouraging it.
The worldview he developed, then, was that the world was a horrible place, designed to torture us and make us suffer. Since he knew he couldn’t have done anything bad enough to require that extreme of punishment, the only explanation that made sense was that he was a bad person.
His goal for his life became to do enough good to balance his inherent evil.
You can’t prove a negative
If people are as happy as they determine to be, as Lincoln surmised, then he was determined not to be happy. He was a bad person, and therefore, he needed to be miserable and suffer. It was only through this endless suffering that he could hope to “pay” for his evilness.
As he grew older and began approaching things rationally, he was unable to shake this early programming. After all, there was no way to prove that he wasn’t evil and being punished. Anything bad that happened was proof that the universe was out to get him. Anything good that happened was merely the treacherous universe lulling him into a false sense of security so that it would hurt all the more when the bad thing that was coming finally arrived.
There was only one out. If he could do something so incredibly good that it helped millions if not billions of people, that would surely offset his innate evil. He might not be rewarded for the good he did — in fact, he probably wouldn’t be — but at least, maybe, he could get a stay of execution on the suffering.
Nothing is ever good enough
No matter how much good you accomplish, it is never enough to balance your very existence, if you feel you are a source of evil merely by existing.
Rather than looking at setbacks as learning experiences, he viewed them as evidence that his efforts had no merit. The universe was telling him, in no uncertain terms, that what he was doing was not good enough. He wasn’t good enough.
I am quite honestly in awe at the level of optimism that was required for him to keep trying. If I’d had the same formative experiences he’d had, I don’t know that I would have been able to persevere.
And yet, he had glimpses that there was another way of looking at things. He did a lot of spiritual work and exploration, trying to understand the nature of reality. Every so often, he would find himself in a place of peace that let him see what was really there.
Inner peace and joy
Those moments of inner peace were what he termed moments of enlightenment. For those brief windows, he ceased to be struggling against a universe out to get him. Instead, he seemed to watch, with no attachment to either action or result, as his body went through its day.
What he felt during these periods was a sense of abiding bliss. It was as if he could pull aside the curtain and look at the backdrop of the universe. That backdrop was painted in shades of joy, on a panel of ecstasy.
That led him to reevaluate his position on the nature of the universe, and his place in it. Perhaps the universe was a good thing. And, as part of that universe, perhaps he was inherently good. Maybe, all of his sufferings had merely been a way to give him the understanding necessary to help others end their suffering.
Because it’s one thing to come from a happy place and try to convince others that the world is a happy place, and they should be happy. It’s another thing entirely to come from a place of darkness and despair and tell others that, no matter how awful the world they see is, they can choose a different one.
Conclusion
Joy is a state of being. It is based on how you view the world, and your place in the world. As such, it can be changed by changing either your view of the world or your view of yourself.
I found joy early in my life. I chose a purpose that was bigger than myself and dedicated myself to improving my abilities to successfully pursue that purpose.
My husband found joy late in life. He spent his early years suffering in misery, trying to “win” the right to be free of suffering. It wasn’t until he changed his relationship to his past and future goals that he was able to find joy.
He still doesn’t consistently come from a place of joy. Some days, he falls back on his universe-bad-me-evil point of view. But at least now, he knows there’s a way out of that view. And when he does come from joy, he is an incandescent beacon of hope for others.
It gives me great joy to know that I am helping him. Because, if my purpose is to increase the amount of hope in the world, helping him find joy is one of the best ways to achieve that purpose.
You can also buy me a Ko-fi. ☕️
This is a response to the prompt by Dr. Gabriella Korosi:
The following other authors’ takes on joyfulness strongly resonated with me.
Akemi Sagawa chooses her state of beingness in her daily planner. She also recognizes that our overall emotions are those we choose to come back to through our decisions.
GnanVi_Speaks has many definitions of joy. I found myself nodding my head in agreement as I read.
Read all of my responses (so far) to the Dancing Elephants Press 52 weekly writing prompts:
Read all of my articles for the second Dancing Elephants Press anthology:
