Today I was just sick of it. I was drinking my cup of coffee in the morning in front of my window, with the sun shining on my face ‘aaaaah’ (hell yea, you know that feeling.) But then a thought hit me:
“I'm enjoying myself right now, but am I happy? When am I happy? What is happy? And what is the difference between what I feel now, joy, and what happiness would feel like or feels like? Isn’t it the same?”
After doing some research, I came to the conclusion that they are more similar than different. But just because I found it interesting I started writing about it, and now we’re here. Let’s see what I found out.
I started by searching the internet for some definitions of happiness and joy. I can honestly tell you that this wasn’t helping at all. Here are some definitions that I found around the internet:
A dictionary definition of happiness “a state of well-being; a pleasurable or satisfying experience.” A definition of the word rejoice, related to the word joy, is “to feel great delight; to be glad.”
Happiness is based on an experience or another external stimulus. On the other hand, joy is based on internal well-being or the anticipation of well-being.
Happiness is an emotion in which one experiences feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense pleasure. And Joy is a stronger, less common feeling than Witnessing or achieving selflessness to the point of personal sacrifice frequently triggers this emotion. Feeling spiritually connected to a god or to people.
Consult English dictionaries and you’ll see how contrived this supposed contrast between joy and happiness is. The first definition of joy in the Oxford dictionary is “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” While happy is defined as “Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.”
Joy and happiness are wonderful feelings to experience but are very different. Joy is more consistent and is cultivated internally. It comes when you make peace with who you are, why you are and how you are, whereas happiness tends to be externally triggered and is based on other people, things, places, thoughts and events.
Happiness is like rising bubbles — delightful and inevitably fleeting. Joy is the oxygen — ever present.
Well…… What do you think of that? Confusing as fuck right? Maybe it’s me, but for the slow readers (and for the fun of bashing on some stupid terminology) I will explain what I don’t understand.
I always thought that pleasure was a way to enjoy, but the first thing I found on the internet already got me confused there. Since they state that happiness is caused by a pleasurable experience. And joy is what I thought of happiness according to them. I always thought that happiness was being happy or glad about just ‘things’. But they just turned it all around. Then the second thing I found made a nice difference between internal and external. I found this a good way to separate the two, I was happy or I enjoyed the fact that they did this (I still don’t know.) Later on to be disappointed because other people stated that joy comes from personal sacrifice and feeling connected with god or other people. That’s obviously external. And to top it all of you can even define joy as feeling a great happiness and I always thought that happiness was the greater feeling of the two……... Well, I have never been more wrong about anything in my life. But then I started asking my friends about it, what turned out? They all had different ideas about it. So, I wasn’t done.
My experience with happiness and joy
I started thinking of my experience of happiness and joy. I realized that whenever I eat food, I’m happy about the fact that I can eat the food and enjoy it. So I’m happy and I can enjoy about the same situation. The cause of my happiness is my joy often. I enjoy hanging out with my friends, so that makes me happy. I have been thinking of this a lot and I think this applies to everything. It is never happiness without joy.
If I had a date, I’m happy about the fact that I enjoyed the date. If I didn’t enjoy the date, I’m not happy about it. I could be happy because of the fact that I had a date. Maybe just having the date gave me confidence or whatever. But I think I will enjoy the confidence that the date gave me first and then I will be happy about the fact that I enjoy it.
I believe I can even enjoy the fact that I enjoyed something and then be happy about the fact that I can do that. For instance, if I have a nice evening with my friends, the next morning I can enjoy the fact that I enjoyed with my friends and that makes me happy. I think I could even enjoy the fact that I’m happy about the fact that I enjoy the fact, that I enjoyed with my friends (cracking your brain right? Just reread that a couple of times to realize that I’m right.)
‘Okay Olaf, all fun and stuff. I can see the fact that you enjoy playing with the words, but is there any point to it all?’ I’m happy (or/and??? enjoy the fact that) you asked….. The more I keep using the words, the more similar they start looking. I do feel like there is a difference though, there must be.
Spot the difference
Let’s do a small experiment. I’m going to put down a view sentences and I want you to read them and think for yourself what that would mean to you. What is the first thing that pops up in your mind?
I am joy
I am happy
I’m in a state of happiness
I’m in a state of joy
Personally, I feel like we’re referring to the same thing but from a different perspective. If I would use the sentence I am joy, it seems similar to I’m happy. I think in both cases we try to refer to a ‘good’ situation we’re. The difference to me would then be the cause of that situation. With I’m happy, I would refer to the fact that I AM a good situation. It’s a part of me. While for joy, I enjoy, means that the situation is external and isn’t a part of me. Therefore the ‘good’ situation might be always around, but we only enjoy it at times. By referring to happiness as a part of us. I believe we can start seeing the moments of the absence of happiness as a personal flaw. I’m not happy then means, I’m not in a ‘good’ situation and that means you are NOT something positive. When interpreted this way, it could have an immediate impact on your self-image, since it’s a positive part of you and you’re missing it. The downgrade in self-image can then cause a negative cycle. This will turn into less happiness and joy (just however you want to call it.)
What do we do with this idea?
Let’s assume joy and happiness just mean the same thing and try this out for ourselves. Whenever we feel this feeling of pleasure and delight, we refer to it as joy. We enjoy the feeling, it’s not constant, it’s just there at the moment. It’s not a part of us. Although we can get a better understanding of it, by trying to enjoy more moments and making our bond with this feeling stronger. For this, we need to change our mindset.
Since we assume there is just one feeling, we can now look at the question, how do we get that feeling in a sustainable way as often as possible? I’m going to think about this question. My current thought is taking care of ourselves like our own best friend, mom and dad. We should enjoy, be healthy and sometimes be strict to ourselves. Besides this, we can try to find joy in every small thing, see the beauty in everything around us. I believe by doing this, we’ll realize that we’ve been talking about the same feeling all along and that the only difference is in the intensity of the feeling and how long it lasts. But we’ve been confused by the different words we use for the intensity and duration of the feeling.
I hope you like the article, please let me know by leaving a comment, asking a question or pressing the like button. Personally, I learned a lot by writing this article. If you liked it as well, make sure to check out my other article at www.Obooij.com
Things I read while writing this article:
https://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_bib/freetexts/strack_f_1991.pdf#page=85
https://www.compellingtruth.org/joy-happiness.html
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Happiness_vs_Joy
https://www.epm.org/blog/2015/Nov/11/difference-happiness-joy
https://www.psychologies.co.uk/joy-vs-happiness
https://www.islandpacket.com/living/religion/article33609807.html
http://www.daniellelaporte.com/definition-of-happiness-and-why-its-different-from-joy/
The book of Joy - Desmond Tutu en Tenzin Gyatso