JOY AND HAPPINESS

Joy and happiness are pleasurable feelings and experiences. These terms are most often used interchangeably, but there are subtle differences between them. 

The feeling of happiness usually occurs, after achieving a hard earned goal or victory.This type of happiness creates a personal feeling of elation that is always associated with self-worth, self- confidence and self-respect. These characteristics of happiness are long lasting; they persist even after the feeling of happiness dissipates. I still remember how happy I felt when I graduated from medical school, after six years of very hard work. I felt so light that I thought I could fly.

There are other types of happiness that comes from having good luck or good fortune, like winning a big prize in lotto. This type of happiness is temporary and it is not associated with abovementioned characteristics.

Joy, in the other hand, is the feeling and expression of gladness towards other people that we care about, like our family members, good friends and the person we are romantically involved. Joy is shared   good will. But joy is also a temporary good feeling and does not have associated characteristics, except that joy is pure, and never has negative feelings (such as jealousy and egotism) associated with it. The point I want to make here is that, happiness is self- centered, somewhat egocentric good feeling, while joy is a shared good feeling.

As I see it, joy is a better feeling to have in our interhuman relationships. It is said that lovers stand face-to-face staring at each other’s eye with joy, while real good friends stand side-by-side, staring at the things they both care about with joy.

We live in an age of social media dominance, it is a jungle out there. Under the freedom of expression in disguise, in unregulated social media, anything goes. It is very easy to create a false persona, false beliefs and false emotions in social media.

Nowadays, intellectual and emotional honesty, and respect for the truth are difficult to come by. Yet, these are very important qualities to have for our interhuman relationships. Therefore, I feel that to have real joy in our life, we have to have these personal qualities and love in our heart, in order to establish good relationships and real good friendships.

Good friends usually have a similar mind, similar thoughts and similar emotions. The magic of real good friendship is that when we are together, our souls feel joy without even uttering a word. Good friends hold our vulnerabilities, when we are vulnerable; when we err, they understand and forgive us and when we need help, they help us.

Having real good friends is one of the biggest gift in life, one can give to himself or herself.