Pedro Blas Gonzalez plumbs the differences between happiness and joy:
While happiness is an outward expression of gratifying experiences, a moment of levity in life’s stages, joy is like smiling privately. Happiness is often attained from outside ourselves; joy takes the form of inner peace. Like fuel that feeds an engine, happiness propels us through the world of other people, things, and events without calling attention to itself. Happiness that is not self-conscious is more akin to joy than our popular conception of happiness. We can reflect on our state of being happy and cherish it, while not commanding it. However, more often than not, happiness is only noticed when it is lacking in our lives. This is the point when we realize that happiness has evaded us. …
One reason that happiness is often fleeting is because it attempts to take root in what can be described as moving targets. Happiness is the temporary culmination of emotional fulfillment. This makes our emotional and spiritual well-being transparent. Often it is during the noticeable absence of happiness in our lives, when we have become consumed by the idea of trying to attain happiness, that we realize how fleeting happiness truly is. We cannot cultivate the search for happiness, as we can joy.
Update from a reader:
Your excerpt from Pedro Blas Gonzalez left me feeling confused, because I thought he had it exactly backwards.
To me, happiness is a state better than contentment, in which I am pleased with my life in general. I considered myself a happy person for most of my life until my husband died at age 59; after that I was not happy very often. Even so, before and after his death I had moments of joy. Joy to me is an experience of exalted happiness, where the uplift of the moment, whether found in a transcendent view, inspiring music, intense pleasure, spiritual revelation, intellectual discovery, or some other personal experience, raises me above whatever ordinary feelings I have.
If Gonzalez is looking for a word, I would suggest the word “gladness” as used in some versions of the Bible, instead of the word joy as defined in his essay. Particularly in the spiritual sense, a feeling of gladness can underlay happiness and contribute to moments of joy. He might also wish to explore the various uses of the word mindfulness in contemporary culture.
Gonzalez complains that happiness is now a buzzword “equated today with the attainment of pleasure,” and his discussion of joy seems to ignore common definitions of the word. What I concluded is that in this essay, Gonzalez decides to reject the popular understanding of a vocabulary word and assert his superior ability to define it, in the process inverting the usual understanding of the definitions of “joy” and “happiness.” I would be more impressed with his essay if he didn’t try redefining words that have achieved an agreed-upon definition among the masses of English speakers. He may be writing perfectly good philosophy, but his redefinitions are yet another attempt, in the view of this experienced editor and follower of linguistics and Language Log, of an unscientific attempt to create rules for English that don’t exist.
The Dish 