What is Joy?
The good news is that the best things in life really are free.
When I was a little girl, I had a very limited understanding of what joy meant. I thought of it as a virtual synonym of happiness, or perhaps a stronger, longer-lasting form of happiness.
Given this initial impression, it is perhaps understandable why I found the biblical command to, “Be joyful always,” (as 1 Thessalonians 5:16 is sometimes rendered in English) an impossible task, almost to the point of cruelty. I understood that Christians were meant to be content in all circumstances, to rejoice in persecutions, etc. But even so, it seemed a challenge of Herculean proportions to be joyful always. How could I work up such joy in myself when I was prone to see the negative in life?
As the years have passed and I have done a good bit of reading and living, I have come to see joy as something rather different. It is not, in fact, a synonym for happiness at all, though they do overlap on many occasions. Whenever anyone asks me to define joy now, I point to this passage by C.S. Lewis.
“I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.”[1]
Lewis makes a few key claims about joy here: 1) It is different from both happiness and pleasure, and 2) it could as equally be called unhappiness or grief, but 3) it is a grief we want, and yet 4) joy is never in our power.
As I have grown in wisdom and experience, I have seen the truth of Lewis’ words. My greatest joys and my greatest griefs seem to intersect upon the timeline of my life. Marriage has brought me both joy and grief, as has parenthood. Writing has brought joy and grief many times over. The same friendships that have grieved me have also granted me joy. At no point has any of this felt particularly within my power.
Take, for example, my recent trip to Germany with my husband. People say money cannot buy happiness, but that is a falsehood. Money bought us a lot of happiness on that trip. But toward the end of our sojourn, my husband and I had a meaningful discussion about our son. Leading up to the vacation, we had been going to appointment after appointment, attempting to determine why our son’s development is delayed. We knew that as soon as we returned, the appointments would begin again.
Sitting there at a restaurant in Basel, we spoke our fears to one another. We grieved that things were not going as we had hoped. Our eyes were suspiciously moist. We were by no means happy in that moment, yet I felt the joy of connection with my husband. We were united in grief, and that union produced a joy that was rooted in our love for one another and our son.
We tend to avoid grief like the plague, or if we cannot avoid it, we keep it hidden away. Yet, grief is the price we must pay for love in a world that is full of evils. Jesus Christ warned that a time would come when, “Most people’s love will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:12) I see this all around me, as those on the Right and Left of the political spectrum despise one another. We were meant to love our neighbors as ourselves, but we are declaring our neighbors to be enemies and exempting ourselves from the command to pray for them.
Just yesterday evening, I said to my husband, “The world feels so dark right now.” It reminds me very much of a quote from The Lord of the Rings, when the elf Haldir says amid the gathering storm of war, “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”[2]
It takes faith to see the light in these dark times. The light is there—I see it! I believe in its ultimate victory. But until then, Haldir is right: our love will be mingled with grief, our rejoicing with mourning.
Even so, we can have joy in these dark days, for joy can exist side-by-side with grief. And joy is not something we can ever create for ourselves. Happiness we can buy, but joy comes to us always as a kind of surprise: a blessing far beyond what we deserve. It is lavished upon all human beings, but it takes a spirit of faith to reach out with our empty hands and receive it.
Perhaps the most famous thing ever written about joy is the German poet Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” which is most famous for its inclusion at the end of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Schiller portrays joy as something utterly divine which has the power to bring human beings together.
“Joy, beautiful divine spark,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter drunk with fire,
Heavenly one, your holiness!
Your magic binds again
What custom strictly divided
All humans will be brothers,
Where your gentle wing abides.”[3]
Schiller makes clear that joy is the preserve of all who live on earth by virtue of the fact that they are creatures.
“All creatures drink joy
At the breast of Nature,
All the good, all the evil,
Follow her trail of roses.”
For Schiller, joy is ultimately rooted in the knowledge that we have a Creator, and that that Creator seeks our good.
“Brothers, above the canopy of stars
A loving Father must live
Are you collapsing, millions?
Do you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the canopy of stars!
Above stars he must reside!”
This is the source of my joy: that I am a creature blessed with immense gifts living in a world that is still full of divine goodness. Not only that, but a day will come when swords will be turned into plowshares, and the griefs that we have borne will be woven into a glorious tapestry that will adorn us for all eternity.
That is infinitely better than happiness, friends, and it is free of charge.
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[1] Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life. (San Francisco: Harper One, 2017), 19.
[2] Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings, Single volume movie tie-in edition (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 339.
[3] Schiller, Friedrich. An die Freude. (“Ode to Joy”)
thanks for writing this! I find your insights into joy encouraging! It reminded me of a article that I wrote on joy. Again, thank you for sharing your words and experience.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theworkbox/p/more-joy?r=14n9jz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web