Up and back, ebb and flow. We can ride every swing of life and still remain centered in inner joy.
Estimated read: 5 minutes
This post is part of the Joy path at The Gracewell Studio. For more on play, color, and the small moments that light you up, visit the Joy path here.
I have spent a lot of years at bedsides. Telemetry units, heart failure floors, the emergency department. I learned something on those units. The patients who navigate their illness or condition best have something steady inside them, something that the circumstance did not chase away.
I thought that something was happiness. It wasn’t. It was joy, and the two are quite different.
Happiness is weather
Happiness is a response. Something happened, a good meal, a text from someone you love. Maybe it’s a day off that feels like a real day off. The feeling, the happiness is lovely, and it leaves when conditions change.
Psychologist Rosean Bishop, writing for Mayo Clinic Health System, describes happiness as a reaction to what is happening around you, and notes that it gets harder to feel when you are struggling. Anyone who has been through a hard season knows this. You cannot schedule happiness for a Tuesday when the Tuesday is falling apart.
Joy is climate
Joy is quieter and lasts longer. Bishop calls it a state of mind, something that can be found even in difficult times, though you have to look for it and stay open to it. It is less about what is happening and more about how you are meeting what is happening.
Joy is the puppy with its head out the car window. It is not waiting for the perfect destination. It is fully in the wind right now.
Joy is rooted in purpose and connection. It shows up when you are doing something that is yours to do, with people who are yours to love, even when the rest of the day is a mess. That is why you can find it in a hospital room, in a laundromat, in a kitchen at midnight. It does not need ideal conditions. It needs your attention.
This is not toxic positivity
Joy is not pretending things are fine. Joy is not a smile taped over grief. You can be heartbroken and still notice the light on the water. You can be scared about a diagnosis and still laugh at something your kid says. Both can be true at the same time. Joy does not cancel the hard thing. It keeps you company inside it.
What a psychologist gently suggests
The nurse in me likes to know what the evidence says when I get poetic about something. Here is what I found, stated carefully.
Mayo Clinic Health System connects the practice of noticing and savoring small joyful moments with better mental health, describing those moments as sparks that build up in the brain over time. Gratitude is part of that practice. So is noticing joy in other people, which tends to lift you in the process.
I am not suggesting joy as a treatment. What I’m sharing is that joy is a skill, one that can be developed and practiced.
A small daily practice
- Name one spark. Once a day, notice one small thing that lit you up. The bird landing on the fence just as you looked out the window this morning. The first sip of your morning starter, held inside your favorite mug. Say, I see you, to the moment, out loud, feel the joy and then write it down.
- Put your hands on something. Fabric, soil, dough, a pen. Joy can live in the hands. Making anything, with presence and intention counts.
- Look for it in someone else. Observe a child at play, a dog on a walk, a stranger laughing at their phone. Sit with their joy, borrow it for a minute. You’re allowed.
- Stop waiting for the conditions. The perfect time doesn’t exist, the only time is now. Be present, roll the window down, feel the breeze in your hair, smile, you’re alive. What a blessing to have today.
I still think about those patients. They were in hospital beds, on monitors, in the middle of something hard, and still they carried something steady inside that the circumstance could not chase away. I used to call it happiness. Now I know its real name, and I know it can be practiced.
Happiness will keep coming and going like the weather. Let it. Joy is the climate you build underneath, one noticed spark at a time. You do not need a better day to begin. This one is enough.
Keep walking the Joy path
- Dopamine Decorating and the Art of Playful Spaces
- Upcycling for Wellbeing: How Creative Re-Making Calms the Mind
- The Pink Boots: On Shame, Thrifting, and Seeing Beauty in What Others Let Go
Go gracefully. 🤍
References
- Bishop, R. (2024, March 18). Finding joy in every phase of your life. Mayo Clinic Health System. mayoclinichealthsystem.org
