Creating a Genuine and Joyful Experience
Hot or cold. Happy or sad. Black or white. Ying and Yang. We live in a binary world where we feel like we can’t have one thing without getting rid of another. So, many of us think that we can’t feel joy until our lives are perfect and positive.
But joy doesn’t fit into the old binary mold we’re used to. In fact, joy is very different from happiness. And because of this difference, you can have joyful experiences no matter what’s happening in your life.
Joy versus happiness: what’s the difference?
Perhaps the best way to understand joy is to understand what joy isn’t. We always confuse it with happiness. But happiness and joy are light years apart. Here’s why:
Happiness comes and goes
Happiness is transitory, and we feel happy depending on what happens on the outside. In fact, you can remember that happiness is fleeting by remembering that happiness happens to us.
We constantly see images of “happy” on social media, so we chase after it to make some of our own. We turn to happy-inducing experiences like shopping, eating, drinking and drugs, just to name a few.
We’ve gotten very good at making happy experiences for ourselves, but that happiness doesn’t last, does it? It brings to mind Albert Einstein’s axiom, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
In the same way, happiness is real, but it doesn’t have much-staying power. Joy, on the other hand, does.
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