Photo Credit: -Gep- via Flickr
What is Joy?
Not happiness exactly, but joy. An active joy. Contagious. Radiant. Inspiring.
While happiness and joy are related, and even arguably overlap, there is a difference.
Kind of like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square.
Joy is a type of happiness, but happiness is not necessarily a type of joy.
The difference, to me, between happiness and joy feels like the difference between a passing stranger smiling back at you vs. the person you love most in the world smiling back at you.
Smiles are nice. Keep smiling at people.
And let’s look for more joy.
Where can we find joy?
Did you ever watch any of those big surprise giveaways that Oprah used to do?
And I’m not necessarily talking about the “Oprah’s Favorite Things” annual Christmas spectacular.
I mean the ones where she surprised an audience full of down-on-their-luck women with a brand new car for each of them, shared Christmas with kids in South Africa, and got surprised by a flash mob on her own show (just to name a few).
In her Lifeclass two years ago, Oprah called the impact of events like that: “Joy Rising”.
The Joy in those episodes was palpable, tangible… I could definitely feel the Joy Rising even across time and through the television.
Watching it made my heart swell, and brought tear to my eyes.
There is something moving about joy.
What would it be like if there were more of that in the world?
What would it be like to have more joy in my own life? What would be different?
Questions like this have lead me to start my own joy experiment.
The Joy Experiment
Once a week, on Mondays, I’ll be asking questions about Joy, digging deeper, and looking for ways to create more in my life, inviting you to look for more joy in your life, and challenging us both to create more in our world.
Instead of test tubes and bunsen burners, we’ll be experimenting with gratitude, love, sharing, dancing, laughter, and whatever else comes up as we play.
This isn’t the kind of experiment that will make your brain ache with a lot of technicalities or rules, no pocket protectors are required, and it’s definitely not any kind of “work”.
This is an experiment more akin to a five year old playing with watercolors. What color do you get when you mix yellow and blue? What if I add red?
Sharing is an element of joy.
And just like that five year old playing with watercolors would love to share the playing and experimenting with a friend, I’d love to share this experiment with you.
That’s why I hope you’ll join me in this Joy Experiment.
Joy is time spent with family and making memories. Also having a job that you are good at is very fulfilling and brings lots of joy, teaching is one of my biggest joys.
April, I love that you are pointing out how joy is found in simple things. I also love how much you joy you bring to your job and get back in return. Those students are lucky to have you teaching them!