“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the
pain.” Joseph Campbell
Whenever new clients tell me that they are depressed, unhappy or lost in
life, I always make it a point to ask them early on in the counselling
sessions, “do you have any joy? And if
so when do you have it?” Most of them
answer, “no,” and I feel that this answer has much to say about the problem.
I think of joy as a bit like a barometer in a person’s life. I often remark to my clients, “one ounce of
joy is worth a ton of pain.” Joy is
explosive stuff. It smashes though pain,
sorrow or despair like nitro-glycerine.
However bad things are, experiencing some moments of joy can be like a
fuel that keeps us going and makes life worthwhile. In this respect, the only other things that I
can think of that keep people going through really difficult times are love and
meaning. Both of these are good, but neither
seems to spring from nowhere and both take time and are sometimes hard to find.
There is something about joy which can
feel like revelation or transcendence.
It adds a bit of what feels like magic and often it doesn’t seem to have taken much work at all
– it just comes – sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes by doing something we can
connect to.
First, I want to define what joy is and how it differs from happiness,
pleasure and contentment. Pleasure is always
fleeting – whether or not we feel later that it was full or empty. No one would want a life without any
pleasure. It would be awful and dull
indeed; but like eating chocolate or spending money, no amount of it can make
you happy. Happiness can also be
fleeting. Although more sustained than pleasure
and deeper for sure, it could be here one hour and gone the next. One may have a perfect day in the sunshine one
day, for instance, and then someone very close may die the next. That seems to be the way life is at
times. Although contentment isn’t quite
so keenly felt as happiness and you may not get quite the same buzz, it is more
lasting and deep. It is a general
feeling that life is good and that there is a lot more to enjoy than to suffer in
a typical stretch of time. It is not
possible to be content one day and not the next, although ones levels of
contentment can go gradually up and down with the events and feelings brought
upon by life. Many philosophers and
psychologists have said that it is better, and more realistically sustainable, to
be content than to be happy.
Joy is something different, a bit of an X Factor ingredient, in fact.
You’ll certainly know if you’ve had it.
It feels a little bit like a lightning bolt or feeling on the wave of
something marvellous. It may be there in
those moments when we feel that life is wonderful and it is good to be
alive. It seems to come from within but
also seems to connect with what is outside of us on a profound level. Richard Wagner commented that, “Joy is not in
things; it is in us.” Unlike pleasure which seems to come from something
outside of us, joy seems to spring up from inside.
Joy usually lasts anywhere from a few minutes to a whole day and there
may be lucky times when it visits frequently.
Many people comment that these feelings arise when they are in nature,
perhaps sitting in a field of wild flowers or walking in a wood and listening
to the birds. Most of us find it when we
are in love - especially when we make love – the sense of connection can be
deep and powerful - sex is normally pleasurable, but when it is joyous it seems
to tap into our life-source and can be transcendent. Some people feel it with moments of sporting
success or with the arts – music and dancing are often quoted. The poet Keats said that, “A thing of beauty
is a joy for ever,” and so we can see how the arts and nature would tap into
this. Sometimes being with a friend and
finding yourself suddenly at one with them can also bring it. Spending time playing with children,
especially our own can also bring it.
Hobbies can bring moments of it, too, and those who have religious faith
will also speak of knowing joy from time to time. And most of us know that giving can be joyous
– much more joyous than receiving.
These things all have in common a sense of being connected (even if
momentarily) to someone or something that seems to make us fully alive and take
us beyond ourselves to a wider sense of the specialness of things around us and
beyond us. Moments of joy can be closely
connected to our “inner child.” Children
seem to tap into joy more than adults....think of “jumping for joy” and you
think of yourself as being childlike or perhaps like a new-born spring lamb
discovering his legs for the first time.
What happens to us as adults to deprive us of that?
When one has joy, there is a sense of freedom - of being like a bird;
and when one has despair there is a sense of heaviness. Joy resolves into peace, whereas if you are
in despair a sense of stagnation and meaninglessness is sure to follow. It has been reported (for instance by a Macmillan
Cancer survey) that people turn to moments of joy when they recall what was
good about their lives. These moments made them feel that their lives were good
and that it was great to be alive, and they feel buoyed up by that as death
approaches. Near to their end, few
people seem to be consoled much by the gods of pleasure and money. Of course it is good to have had those, but
they won’t ultimately give anyone a sense that life has been good.
C S Lewis commented, “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not
substitutes for joy.” If he were alive
today, I suspect that he’d probably say just how much truer that was now than
it was when he wrote it – for the world is getting fuller and fuller of
pleasures, and distractions – most of them offering instant gratification and
triviality rather than something deeper. For instance, one wonders how many people who
find themselves addicted to Facebook would want or need to be so wrapped up in
it if they had moments of joy in their lives.
Given how explosive and enlivening joy can be, one begins to see that,
no matter how bad things are in a person’s life, it can blast though it –
perhaps not permanently – permanent changes take time – but enough to give a
sense that things are going to get better and that the world is not such a bad
place after all. When people are depressed,
that is what they need to feel. They
need to feel that life is worthwhile and that there is something in it that can
make them feel good.
Counselling can be a perfect place to explore joy in your life. Do you have any? What is it and where does it come from? When are you likely to experience it? If you don’t have any, why not? Is there someone who helps you to find
it? Are you somehow sabotaging it or is
someone around you trying to do that? Did
you have it in the past or as a child?
Have you stopped doing something that you used to do that brought you
it? Have you started becoming overwhelmed by the
cares, responsibilities and jobs of this world rather than allowing a space for
joy?
This is why I always talk about joy to my clients who come saying that
they are depressed, have no meaning or feel lost, sad or lonely. I know from my own life and those of previous
clients just how powerful a force joy is and how it shifts things and brings
hope. Finding joy or at least creating the conditions were joy might arise can
be an important way of moving out of depression. Joy can be a barometer showing
how a person’s life is.
David
is a fully qualified and BACP Accredited Counsellor. If you wish to talk about joy in your life, you can book a face to face or skype session with him by
ringing 07578 100256 or emailing him at David@eastcheshirecounselling.com.
You can also follow him on Twitter as Contented Counsellor at: https://twitter.com/#!/SeddonDavid
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