Thinking About Happiness vs. Joy
And the impact of joyful moments in our lives.
I have had a real time of it the last two weeks, with some very good, very intense highs and equally intense lows. As such, I’ve been thinking more about the importance of joy in our lives and wanted to revisit one of my posts from a year ago when I was musing about happiness and what makes us happy. I am still working on the book mentioned in this text, and alas, I don’t have red hair now. But you never know about the future!
Looking back to March 2022:
This new book in progress is a different one for me. Contemporary, with a foot on the magical side, barely any food, but still partially set in Italy. However, it's a book about happiness.
Why happiness? Because so many of us are desperate for it, including me. We're in the midst of our third year of a global pandemic which has exacerbated various economic problems (supply chain, inflation, employment, etc.). Now most of the world is on the edge of their seats watching the war between Ukraine and Russia, watching with horror as war crime after war crime is committed by an egotistical, maniac dictator—hospitals bombed, tanks running over cars with ordinary people inside them, apartment complexes shelled until they turn to rubble. Our global economy is already feeling the effects as oil companies gouge gas prices (which will lead to more and more supply chain issues as trucks become costly to fuel). Sometimes it might be hard to even think of happiness when there are so many people truly suffering. And often, these people suffering are people we know. People we love.
As part of my research (and perhaps my own self-help), I've been reading a lot about what makes us happy. One of the first books I picked up was Joyful, by Ingrid Fetell Lee.
In Joyful, she describes a myriad of fascinating ways that humans are moved by small things, like the color of a wall in a room, fuzzy slippers, or the curl of a warm cat next to you on the couch.
I have thought a lot about this book because joy ("an intense, momentary experience of positive emotion") differs from happiness. Fetell Lee not only describes that in this TED video, but she shows you too.
The book gave me a bit of confidence I didn't realize I needed. The thing is, I love color. The main colors in my house are bold reds punctuated by pops of other bright colors. We have contemporary art (Shepard Fairey is a fave) all over the walls, often mixed in with a mélange of ancient maps or music posters. I just dyed the underside of my hair red, a bright contrast to the blonde. It peeks out "like a phoenix rising from the flames," a woman told me (joyfully!) this week when I was dining out.
I definitely do not live in a Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn world of muted grays and earth tones. My red car stands out on the highway from the blacks, whites, grays, and muted other colors.
But there has always been a little underlying concern. I'm no longer a kid, so should I be dying my hair in such a crazy fashion? Will it mean that people take me less seriously? When I pull out my laptop in a meeting (which, admittedly, hasn't been the case for a bit seeing as everything has been virtual for so long), will I be judged for all the stickers covering the lid? When my husband teases me for my faux fur coat in a riot of pink, white, and brown splotches and calls it my "Muppet coat," will others laugh at me too?
As I age, I do worry less. I have much more of a "fuck-it" attitude than I did when I was in my youth. Plus, I think that all these quirky loves of mine make people think I'm much younger than I actually am, and I am definitely ok with that. In my day job, I work for a company that hires predominantly younger people (I'm seriously 20 years older than 93% of the company), so my love for wild things seems less of a jolt than it has when I've worked for more stodgy tech companies in the past.
I also worry less because I am starting to find that not only do these things give ME joy but that others find joy in some of these bold choices of mine. "I love your hair/electric blue leather jacket/glitter boots...I wish I were brave enough to wear something like that."
I always think to myself, why aren't you? What's stopping you? What would happen if you did?
I buy flowers when I want to. I admit that I love playing video games (when I used to be embarrassed because a serious intellectual, a writer, shouldn't I be doing something else?). I am drawn to street art and strangeness. I am curious about the weird things on the menu (this weekend, I had a drink with cream cheese powder in it!!). I am drawn to the color, the shape, and the uniqueness of a thing.
One of the things that Fetell Lee says in her book is that once she started noticing what types of things bring people joy, she started finding joy everywhere. I, too, have found this to be true like my profound appreciation for this cool wallpaper in the bathrooms at one of my favorite restaurants in Cambridge, The Lexington.
And the best part of all these moments of joy is that they add up. When you are looking for these little pops of joy, they help bring about a greater sense of happiness overall. At the end of my day, I always write down three things that brought me joy, and honestly, I can say those little moments of joy are tiny beacons of light in the darkness.
I'll leave you with one more thing that never fails to make me feel pure elation. Whenever I see the fur cup and spoon art, Object, by surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim, I feel incredible joy.
I remember, as a child being so curious and fascinated by the pictures of this furred bowl, plate, and spoon that I saw in my Childcraft Encyclopedia. It seemed so strange, so wonderful, so impossible. When turned a corner and unexpectedly saw it in MoMA decades ago, I cried a little. Tears of happiness to finally see this thing of wonder, this art that brought me such pure and true joy and that I never expected to see in person in my lifetime.
What brings you joy?
Back to 2023.
On a whim, I asked Midjourney to imagine an object that elicits joy from its observers. And this is where I mention that sometimes there is a fine line between joy and terror.
Also, I love how it imagined an artist’s stamp in the bottom right of each image (it was different on all the variations of the images), as if the idea of an “object” meant it needed some ownership, when really the AI is making it all up.
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It's so interesting to me that the things that bring us that moment of joy can -continue- to elicit the emotion every time we encounter them. I wonder if the joy becomes something closer to happiness after it's experienced several times. Maybe it becomes so reliable that we respond more with contentment.
LOVE this! I'm buying the joy book right now!