A Whole New Take on Joy

Someone who has self confidence has no reason not to be happy. Happiness is a state of being. There are people who are happy when they do happy things, which is very different from being a happy person.

It’s like people who do good things, but they are not necessarily good people. When they are doing something good, they are good, but in the rest of their lives they mistreat people. We can experience happiness as either a verb or a noun. Being happy is a 24/7 thing. No matter when or under what circumstances you are happy, not only on your terms. There are things you can do, that while you are doing them, they make you very happy, but that does not make a joyous person.

A joyous person is joyous even when she is sad. If joy is a verb, while you are joyous you are joyous, and when you are not you are not. But, if you are a happy person from the core, you have that self-confidence that gets you through all emotional states. When you’re sad you will cry, but you’re still that happy person internally. It does not manifest at every moment as dancing or singing or celebrating. It manifests in being honest in the moment, and being truthful to a sad experience that deserves to be cried over. Someone who is so oblivious to sadness is not a happy person. That’s someone who can’t handle sadness. Maybe the way he handles sadness is by completely denying it. A person who is secure and has that sense of joy at her center, that joy will sometimes manifest in happy ways, but even when that person has a sad experience the joy does not go away.

There is an expression in the Zohar: Joy is on one side of the heart; sadness is in the other. A secure person experiences each one of life’s moments to its fullest. It gives you a whole new take on joy: It’s not about doing things to be happy; it is about having an inner joy that is always there with you.

 


Go deeper into this subject: Is Joy a Verb or a Noun?, Functional or Dysfunctional Joy, How to Find Joy In Your Life, The Kabbalah of Psychology: Joy and Depression, Joy In Four Dimensions

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