Happiness or Sustaining Joy
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
July 28, 2024
Good morning Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning, we are continuing to look at joy. The scripture I have chosen for today is from Psalm 16:9-11 from the New Revised Standard Version.
Therefore, my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
For you do not give me up to Sheol
or let your faithful one see the Pit.
You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Last week, as I was standing in the greeting line after Meeting for Worship, Jim Kartholl approached me and said he missed the first part of my message and was wondering if I had talked about the difference between happiness and joy. I told him I hadn’t, but that we were probably headed in that direction in the coming Sundays.
Over the years, many have talked about the differences and even some have made entire theologies around the differences that they see specifically in the Bible. But in my research, most of the time happiness and joyfulness, and you can even throw in blessedness (or Eugene Peterson even at times uses “lucky”), all can be interchangeable in the Bible.
As I was doing my research for this message, I came across author, designer, and researcher, Ingrid Fetell Lee and her website, Aesthetics of Joy. Her take on happiness and joy really caught my attention because even though she is coming from a more secular source, she speaks deeply to what we are taking about this morning. Here is her view of joy and happiness.
“Joy is different than happiness. Happiness is something that measures how good we feel over time. But joy is about feeling good right now, in the moment.”
This is very similar to many of the theologians I trust, and it speaks to what I have experienced in my life.
Ingrid goes on to say,
“This simple distinction has big implications. Our culture is obsessed with the pursuit of happiness, but in the process, we kind of overlook joy. We pursue the things we think will make us happy, but in the process, we often find ourselves too busy or exhausted to experience or appreciate joy. Yet joy is a lot more immediate and accessible than happiness. And ironically, it may actually be one of the most powerful routes to happiness. So rather than chasing after happiness, maybe what we should be doing is focusing on joy instead…”
That summarizes it so well. And when we add scientists and psychologists to the mix things do not change that much. This view of happiness and joy then becomes about a state of being influenced by a range of different factors, measured over a period of time.
This morning, I want to help you see this for yourself. To do that, let’s do a little experiment. And just like good scientists, we quakers like to experiment by first asking some queries that Ingrid had me asking myself.
For example, if I ask you, Are you happy? - how do you respond? Take a moment to think about that. Are you happy?
Ingrid says, “You might start thinking about how fulfilled you are in your career, your health, the state of your relationships with family and friends, your significant other or maybe your desire to find one. And let’s be honest, sometimes it’s even a bit difficult to tell if you’re happy. Maybe you’ve experienced this. Most of your life is firing on all cylinders, but you’re dealing with a difficult situation at work [or in your family] and so while you feel like you should be happy, you’re not sure you are.”
This then could go back to last week’s message when I talked about the things that steal our happiness and joy. Are we aware of what those are?
We must admit that happiness is complex, and sometimes, the more we think about it, the less certain we become.
Now, if I ask you this query, Do you feel joyful? – how might you respond? Again, take a moment to consider this. Do you feel joyful?
I sense it is a much simpler query. Because joy is an emotion measured in the moment, it’s not something we have to think about.
Ingrid says, “We know what joy feels like, and we can usually say with pretty good accuracy whether or not we’re feeling it in a given moment.
If you read my As Way Opens this week, I named specific ways I saw joy in the places we traveled. It is easy to see if we just look and reflect.
Actually, in my mind right now, I have a list of things that bring me joy – some might surprise you. And I might be surprised by what brings you joy.
But then, if I were to ask you, What would make you happy? Now, that might open up a can of worms and send you in a much different direction. What would make you happy?
Ingrid says, “The answer might be anything from earning a promotion to getting a degree to getting married to moving closer to (or further away from!) your family” and let’s add having your political candidate win the election.
The problem is that many of these things aren’t in our control.
But if I asked you, What would bring you joy? I’ll bet you could name at least a handful of things that might do the trick.
· A walk on the beach at sunset.
· Playing with a puppy.
· Lunch or a phone call with a good friend.
· A bouquet of flowers.
· An inspiring piece of art.
· A visit to a vibrant café in a different part of town.
· Listening to an upbeat song (and dancing for a few minutes).
· Eating a favorite food.
· Getting your hair done or cut (there is just something about that which makes you feel good – well that is if you have hair).
Because folks, true joy lives in moments, making it a lot simpler and easier to find than happiness.
Let’s take a pause here - joy is nice, but if you are listening carefully, you probably heard me say that it only lasts a moment. You are probably asking, “What do mean, Bob? That’s not what we want. I don’t know about you, but I want lasting joy, complete joy, actually joy all the time would be nice, right?”
Well, let’s be honest, you might feel good while listening to music. I know many of you not only enjoy Eric’s music during worship, but also go and listen to him at a local eatery or at Feinstein’s in Carmel. Whenever I do that, I walk away on a high – take for example the Billy Joel concert he gave, it had me filled with joy for weeks. But slowly overtime, it wore off. The difficulties of life reared their ugly heads once again. And I had to ask, does that moment of joy really do anything for my overall happiness?
What’s the value of a walk on the beach at sunset, if all your problems will be waiting right there for you when you get back?
Why go look at amazing art in a museum, if after leaving it you return to your lackluster life?
This is maybe where we can clarify that Joy isn’t happiness, and it isn’t a solution for everything that bothers us in life. This morning in in-person worship, I asked Eric to sing a song by David Wilcox called “The Beautiful,” if you go listen to it, you will see explains this so poetically. In the chorus it says, it is the beautiful that saves us. Or as David Wilcox said about the song, it sustains us. It is the joy that music, nature, art, you fill in the blank, brings that sustains even saves our soul.
Even Ingrid points out that, “What’s interesting is that research has found that these little moments of joy often have a halo effect, where their impact reaches beyond the moment of joy itself. In several important ways, those little moments of joy add up to more than the sum of their parts. And over time, their cumulative effects can lead to greater happiness.”
What she is describing is that sustaining and saving joy.
And this is when it all starts to come together for me. Joy has some important effects on each of us that we need to recognize and understand. I believe they explain how our moments of joy sustain us and help us grow into a life of happiness. I want to focus on just 5 of them this morning.
1. Joy brings us into the present
I used to tell a group of young men that I mentored that we spend too much time worrying about the future and dwelling on out past, all while missing the joy of the present moment. This is exactly what this is all about.
Ingrid says, “Thinking about happiness often takes us out of the moment. We think about past experiences, how much progress we’re making toward our goals, and our likelihood of future happiness. Joy, on the other hand, absorbs us in the present moment. It engages our senses, letting us tune out our worries about what might be wrong with our lives for a little while.”
Quakers have always spoke of Jesus our Present Teacher. The Spirit of the present moment. Many think the “Joy of the Lord” is yet to come, or maybe already came and we missed it. But even Jesus says it is in the present moment, it is now.
2. Joy broadens our minds
Research shows that experiences of positive emotions like joy lead us to take a broader, more open-minded view of the world. Pause on this one for a moment. Christianity, even religion in general, has been seen and labeled as narrow minded, even at times, closed minded. And when describing these people, it is said they have no joy.
Just think about the people you know who are the most rigid, the ones who seem mad about everything, the curmudgeons who are always complaining, being negative, and pulling us down. They probably lack joy in their lives. And if they lack joy they probably also haven’t broadened their minds. And this leads us directly into the next one.
3. Joy attracts others
Ingrid says, “One of the most significant — if not the most significant factor influencing happiness — is the quality of our relationships.” I said this last week, joy is contagious. Jesus knew it. John knew it. Even Paul knew it. Joy spreads and fills us up, and perhaps because we unconsciously know this, we are attracted to people who express positivity.
They’ll know we are Christians by our Love – or maybe it should have been, “They’ll know we are Christians by our joy.” Or as the poem I shared in As Way Opens this week by Mary Oliver stated, “It could be anything, but very likely you notice it is the instant when love begins.” Think about that, joy is the instance when love begins.
Thus, before they know we are Christians by our love they must see our joy!
Well, if joy is this important to our relationships and how we understand things, then…
4. Joy improves our health
Ingrid points out, “For example, people reporting regular positivity have been shown to have lower cortisol, inflammation, and blood pressure. Over time, some researchers believe that these effects may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, and even help us live longer.”
But joy also improves our mental health. It brings clarity of mind, it builds confidence, it even helps with depression. I heard of a study once that had a group of people who were put in a room and told really funny jokes for an hour. At points during the experiment people were shedding tears they were laughing so hard. It also showed how laughter is contagious. After the hour they went back to work, and every one of the people in the experiment had much more productive days. They even said their attitude changed. And that they wished every morning could start that way. Hmm… And that leads us to the fifth and last one.
5. Joy begets more joy
Ingrid says, “Research shows that when we feel a little burst of joy (such as that we might feel if someone gave us a small gift of candy), we are more attentive to positive stimuli in our surroundings. We literally see more joy in the world around us when we’re in a positive mood. It’s almost as if the feeling of joy creates a kind of rose-colored filter for the world, prompting us to widen our peripheral vision so that we can find more bursts of joy to keep the feeling going.”
This is why the Bible is full of people reminding us to be joyful, to seek joy to make us complete, to engage with others in joyful activities. Joy is what produces the happiness within our souls for the long haul of life.
So, if joy makes us more exploratory, healthier, and more pleasing to others, this in turn might lead us to discover new opportunities and have more favorable, and even spontaneous, interactions that have the possibility to change our world. Just maybe, the world will seem friendlier, more benevolent, more abundant, and less full of obstacles. Or as our scripture said this morning, “a fullness of joy and pleasures evermore.”
As we enter waiting worship this morning, I want us to return to those queries I started with and allow ourselves to ponder them deeply,
· Am I happy?
· Do I feel joyful?
· What would make me happy?
· What would bring me joy?