Permission to feel joy
“When did you last experience pure joy?”
I asked this question to myself on the New Year’s Eve.
As an advocate for embracing the richness of life’s experiences, and acknowledging unpleasant emotions, as well as the inevitable pain that accompanies them, I realised that I had not been dedicating enough reflection and writing to pleasant emotions such as joy.
The question also made me realise how seldom I had allowed myself to experience genuine joy lately.
If, like me, you sometimes feel you don’t deserve joy or fear that embracing it might lead you to turn away from your pain, and neglect your challenges, your busyness, and all the things you’re supposed to do, here is an opportunity to be curious about joy, welcome it into our lives, open up room for it, and give it the attention it deserves.
Meet Joy
I trust you likely have someone in your life who always seems more prepared for joy, consistently experience it more than others, and actively seek opportunities for joy. Those people have an inherent predisposition towards joy. Regardless of one's natural openness to joy, though, many people commonly share a similar experience of it in various situations.
Joy is a comfortable, delightful emotion that might involve feelings of safety, contentment, excitement, peacefulness, and freedom, which can lighten our very being. Picture joy as the emotional response we experience when our desires are met or when we anticipate fulfilling a goal. It’s the feeling we have when we reunite with something or someone we’ve longed for. Joy is intimately tied to the realisation of connecting with something we’ve yearned for some time, and usually with an outcome that exceeds our expectations.
Joy can also be thought as a reaction to positive events, news, or situations aligned with our desires and life plans. It’s the recognition that things are progressing in the direction that we want, and in harmony with what we care about. In joyful moments, we feel an ideal fit between ourselves and the world.
Joy transforms our perception of the world. In moments of joy, the world appears richer and more vibrant. It encapsulates the fulfilment of hope, creating moments of profound connection with the world around us. Joy serves a catalyst for inspiration; creativity flows more easily when we feel joy. Our attention broadens. Our perspective widens, enabling us to see things in a different light.
Joy is as source of energy, leading us to take action, and strive for improvement. It becomes a driving force for progress in the pursuit of what truly matters to us. It instils the will to work harder and more passionately towards achieving our goals.
Psychiatrist George Vaillant draws a metaphor from changing seasons, likening joy to the arrival of Spring. Just as Spring signifies the end of Winter and the beginning of a new phase, joy provides an opportunity to connect with something or someone new. For Vaillant, joy is connection. It is, indeed, a tool for personal and social bonding. When people reflect on their joyful experiences, they recall them occurring mostly in social settings, and including others they had bonds and trust with.
Through joy, we connect with our authentic selves, too. Joy serves as an opportunity for self-discovery. In moments of joy, we gain insights into our true selves, our core values, and what we long for. Philosophers Dreyfus and Kelly noted, "While bliss [or ecstasy] wipes you out, joy makes you more intensely you." In a state of joy, the self becomes visible, in contrast to sadness, which often conceals the self. This visibility may be linked to our bodies becoming more attuned to reality when experiencing joy.
If joy is such a beautiful feeling with numerous benefits, why don’t we allow ourselves to experience it (more) often?
The common misconception is that we must choose between joy and sadness, as if one will inevitably erase the other. It's not an either/or scenario, though. Life allows us to find joy even as we work on our problems and go through pain. Joy does not diminish our awareness of life's difficulties, unpleasant experiences, or the world's suffering.
In the words of psychiatrist Gerald May, “Most of us know that prohibiting agony in the experience of life must also prohibit joy. To try to accomplish one without the other is to dilute both the experience and the meaning of life.”
Embracing the full spectrum of life’s experiences and recognising and accepting a variety of emotions doesn’t mean that we’re undeserving of moments of joy, the feeling of being alive, and a life well-lived. Our capacity to appreciate joy can coexist with our acknowledgment of pain. In fact, joy is not necessarily found in pleasure; it’s a pleasurable experience, but pleasure does not define joy. Some people find joy in the midst of a crisis or while going through emotional and physical pain.
Give yourself permission to feel the entire range of emotions, including joy. Experiencing such positive feelings does not erase the challenges in your life or the broader world. Integrating more joyful moments into your life doesn't mean eliminating problems, stressors, or hurt. Instead, it means cultivating a richer life where joy becomes a source of strength to cope with difficulties and provides the fuel needed to keep moving forward.
The desire for joy is not only natural but also a fundamental right. Joy is not a mere luxury; it is a necessity. There is no need to feel guilty about seeking joy or pursuing it actively.
It’s perfectly okay to feel good about feeling good. In fact, judging our pleasant emotions as good is good for our psychological and physical health.
It's possible that we’re concealing joy within ourselves as a means to feel secure and shield against potential hurt. Perhaps, what we need is an intentional effort to uncover it.
Take some time to reflect on your underlying beliefs about joy, especially when you realise that you feel bad about feeling joy:
Do you genuinely believe you deserve it?
Do feelings of guilt accompany or follow joyful moments?
What fears or misconceptions might be hindering your ability to fully embrace joy?
What experiences have you had that is telling you to be cautious about feeling joy?
I also recommend making a conscious effort to identify and address the joy-killers in your life. These might manifest as self-imposed punishments or actions that deprive us joy. Allowing work consume us, pushing ourselves to the brink of exhaustion, prioritising others’ needs over our own, navigating draining relationship, forgetting to engage in play, living a life dictated by external expectations, and giving in to constant social comparison are all examples.
Finding joy is both easy and difficult. While accidentally stumbling upon joy may be possible, cultivating it requires some intentionality. We must actively create joy by purposefully pursuing the things we look forward to, or desire and aspire to achieve. This could involve engaging in activities we enjoy but haven't done in a while, reconnecting with someone we've lost touch with, or trying something novel to discover additional sources of joy. Joy is not necessarily the result of dramatic life events; it can be as simple as connecting with nature. Many normal activities can be surrounded with joy and fulfilment, and one activity might seem dull from the outside, only when you experience it you feel joy.
“We need joy as we need air.” - Maya Angelou