When our destiny is attained Nature alerts us by a clear sign. And that sign is joy. I mean joy, not pleasure. Pleasure is only a contrivance devised by nature to preserve life, and does not indicate the thrust and direction of life. But joy always announces that life has succeeded, gained ground, conquered. All great joy has a triumphant note…….wherever there is joy, there is creation; the richer the creation, the deeper the joy (L’Énergie spirituelle, Bergson. 1919)
Joy.
What a great way to know we’re on course.
I like the way Henri Bergson teases out the differences between pleasure and joy. He says that joy includes pleasure but not all pleasure brings us joy.
There’s something heart-filling and truly life enhancing about the emotion of joy.
Psychologists talk about the six basic emotions – fear, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and JOY. Doesn’t joy really stand out in that group? All the others carry some negative quality about them. Sure they are probably there to protect us and to help us survive but what about flourishing? What about creative growth and development? Do we achieve those things through fear, sadness, anger, surprise or disgust? Not so much….
But do we achieve them by honing our choices to be in tune with joy? We sure do.
As Bergson says “wherever there is joy, there is creation; the richer the creation, the deeper the joy.
This focus on joy reminds me of Csikszentmihalyi’s work on “flow” – great video here. He researched what he referred to as peak experiences. You know those times where you are in the zone, where you lose track of time and where you feel at one with the universe. He showed that we experience flow most commonly while we are in the process of achieving something we’ve strived for. Like climbing a mountain, just as we get to the top and we see over that last shoulder and the land stretches out before us as far as we can see.
It also reminds me of Seligman’s work on positive psychology, and some of the happiness research. It does seem that we’ve paid most attention to what is negative or problematic and maybe we need to redress the balance somewhat and consider the positive emotions we experience.
Another thing it makes me think about is Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss“.
Finally, it also makes me think about the Heartmath technique where the deliberate re-creation of joy is one of the fundamental steps in that method.
So, there’s something to explore this week – when do you experience joy? And how can you do more to have more joy in your life?
Heroes Not Zombies 
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