Joy

There is a weird emotional alchemy that leads to joy. I’m not talking about being happy. Happy is being content and comfortable in a persistent state. That may not be the dictionary definition. It’s mine. And for the purpose of what I’m trying to say here it’s important to know the difference. Happy is feeling good and being cool with it. It’s nice. Everyone likes being happy. But happy, no matter how much you like it or how good it feels, is not joy. The difference is extremely important.

Joy is feeling about as good as you can possibly feel. While Happy sits comfortably on the couch, sipping a cool drink and being chill, Joy bursts out of you. It cannot be contained. Happy smolders. Joy explodes. There is an old saying that goes “the flame that burns hottest burns half as long”. What I want my sons to understand is that while joy is feeling about as good as it gets, it doesn’t last as long. It comes at you fast and with a riot of emotions. Happy sits with you, shares a drink and tells you that you’re pretty cool. It’s a nice buzz. Joy bursts into the room, sweeps you up in it’s arms and tells you just how damn lucky it is to be here with you right now because you’re just about as awesome as awesome can be. Then it lets you go, holds its arms to the sky and yells “Woohoo!” and walks out the door. Yeah, something like that.

You can be happy. Don’t get me wrong. Happiness is a great thing to have. It beats the hell out of being sad or melancholy. Or worse yet, that gray area of just existing. A lot of people get stuck there. Being happy is way better than that. You could do a lot worse. If you work hard in life and take care of what’s important to you the end result is a lot of happiness. Cool drinks on a nice couch with good friends, metaphorically speaking. It’s wonderful. But it ain’t enough.

How can that be? With so many people who aren’t happy, who are just existing or even worse just plain sad, how can happiness not be enough? The same way crackers taste great when you’re starving. You can live on it for a while but it’s not food. Joy is happiness turned up, to steal from Nigel Tufnel, to 11. If you don’t get that reference now I’m sad.

What’s important in understanding the difference is that happiness can come from hard work, planning, execution, whatever. Joy requires you to care. It means more because you want it more. Happy is being with your family for Christmas. Joy is getting a puppy as a present. It’s the thing you wanted, begged and pleaded for. You had to work to get it, true. But you had to pour your heart and soul into it. And for those who think a kid doesn’t work for what they desperately want for Christmas then you have never heard the story of the Red Ryder bb gun and you’ve made me sad again. The point is that you can feel happy. You remember being joyful. The memory of it will forever stick with you and you’ll look back on it fondly. And you’ll want it again.

Joy does weird things to you. It can make you scream and cry and look like you’re having the worst time ever. I picture countless images of victorious athletes lifting championship trophies over their heads looking like someone ate the last of the ice cream. They don’t always look like this is the best moment of their lives. But that’s all of the effort and exhaustion, the hours of repetitive practice just trying to get a little better than the other guy all coming out of them at once. The juice was worth the squeeze. And damn fine juice it is.

Fortunately, I have had many moments like that in my life. No World Series trophies but a lot of joy. One of those that sticks out was having lunch with one of my boys one on a road trip for work. He was young and wanted to see what dad did for work, so I brought him along. While we sat in the restaurant waiting for our food, I took out my phone and looked up “interesting questions for kids”. He gave them each a lot of thought before answering. He’s always been an old soul like that. It was fun and we were enjoying the time together. Then about four questions in I read “If you could give every kid in the world a gift what would it be?” Without one second of hesitation, this little boy looks right at me, smiled and answered.

“Joy”, he said.

Better than a puppy at Christmas.

I wanted to sweep him up in my arms, tell him how damn lucky I was to be with him right now and that he was about as awesome as awesome could be. But we were in public and it would have gotten weird, fast. Instead, I just stared at him with wonder and pride. I did my best not to scream out and cry right there because that’s the moment my tacos arrived. And that would be a story that waitress would be telling for a long time. This one day she served this guy and his kid, and the guy was really into Mexican food. Like weirdly so.

I don’t know what it feels like to win a World Series. Given my age and lack of elite baseball skills it’s unlikely I ever will. But I know this: I can’t imagine feeling more exhilaration than I did at the very moment my son said that one word. It told me that all the time I spent trying to teach him important things and be a good dad might actually have been working. My boy had a kind soul and that’s all that I could ask for.

There aren’t trophies for parenting. But that moment showed me that there don’t need to be. Joy is enough. And I’ll take as much of it as I can get.