Joy can mean many things depending on who you are talking to and how you present the question. But the definition of joy remains the same, it is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. Do you remember the last time you felt joyful?
What Is a Joy Journal?
Do you keep a joy journal for those times when you experience a true feeling of joy? Most don’t, although keeping a gratitude journal and recording times of happiness can be beneficial for your health. Even if you don’t keep a journal, when you are joyful, you may find the event is recorded in your mind and your memory. You just have to choose whether you want to remember it.
Some would consider that pleasure brings joy, but that’s an individual response, too. Because people have different interests and find pleasure from different situations. But let me ask you this: does joy depend on someone else helping to create that joy for you? Or if you have a favorite pasttime, would it be possible for you to experience that pleasure alone and totally independent of anyone else?
What Is the True Feeling of Joy?
I once heard it said that when a circumstance is bittersweet, it’s the idea that something broken and uncomfortable is happening while something else makes even the darkest nights sparkle with light. If you believe that there is hope in every heartbreak and that to rejoice you must overcome some phenomenal event or sadness, then does that produce joy?
Consider that perhaps joy is a simple happiness. It knows no rules, no boundaries. It just is! But what about expectations? Can they overshadow an otherwise joyful moment, day, evening, or experience?
Joy, you might say, is the most infallible sign of the presence of God and a supernatural and euphoric sensation that’s contagious, if you allow it to be. Now, wait, before you begin to get out your bow and arrows to shoot down this idea, let me ask you this: Have you ever been in public and felt the pull of a strong universal magnet of joy, laughter, or temporary glee that caught you off guard because someone around you was feeling a HUGE measure of joy?
Joy Is Contagious
Let me state that another way. Joy is contagious. Even if you’re angry, sad, depressed, and having the worst day ever…for a fleeting moment, you can witness a scene that rips your heart apart with uncontrolled feelings of love, hope, happiness and tears. It triggered a supernatural sensation inside your heart that, just for a moment, allowed you to forget about yourself, and celebrate in the here and now of someone feeling joy.
So let me ask you again, when was the last time you felt joy, and can you share that moment with me?