Why "Joy" Doesn't Fix Our Happiness Problem

Here’s a hot take: joy has become the hipster version of happiness.

In terms of popularity, the concept of “happiness” has been on the decline lately, and I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that we collectively have come to an understanding that happiness isn’t the best thing to set as a goal.

Maybe that’s just a symptom of living in a world where dopamine hits are super easy to come by. For most of the world, daily life is radically different from the time when they wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Compared to that generation, we are surrounded by dopamine generating things. Happiness (at least the most fleeting, junk-food version of it) is just a click, swipe, or scroll away. The negative side effects of this new era of instant gratification are wide ranging and well documented at this point. But it’s not yet a passing storm — we are in the middle of it still, and we are watching ripples expand out into other regions of the human experience.

I think our concept of joy is one of those affected regions.

Let’s see if we can rescue it from the thesaurus-toting short-sighted hipsters who dragged it into the ongoing eviction of happiness from our lexicon.

Finding joy in the process?

The self-help section of your local bookstore is full of fluffer-nutter books and essays telling you every which way the fairly obvious story that balancing your metrics of overall life success on a variable like happiness is the wrong way to go. Duh.

But, as usual with this superficial new-age culture that we live in, the thing that’s flung into the vacant space (where the conventional idea used to be) is simply a new form of inadequate.

Usually these books will say something like “find joy in the journey instead”. Fall in love with the process and let the end result come — right?

Generally that’s pretty good, but it doesn’t truly address the underlying mindset that we’ve rightly noticed creates imbalance and discontent. It’s a non-adjustment that really just makes the desired state less accessible, and kicks the consequences of overemphasizing it further into the future.

Happiness (noun) — a state of well-being and contentment

Joy (noun) — a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

Joy is literally just how you feel when you’re really, really happy. So we took one fleeting state and replaced it with an even more fleeting one. Seems like a bad call.

Swapping joy in for happiness is like trying to kick booze by switching to drinking coffee. You’re still chasing an ultimately ephemeral state that, by definition, cannot persist. And you’re relying on exterior things to occasion it in your being. Sisyphus’ stone never stays balanced atop his hill.

The Real Problem

For me, the real root of this problem is in the implication that joy or happiness are externalized states that can be encountered or generated during the course of experience and then internalized. We act as though some ideal combination of ones movement through the world and ones ability to capture fleeting states can land us the grand prize of being how we think we ought to be, or feeling how we prefer to feel.

Think about it…is joy truly something you can find? Like a special golden apple hidden deep within the orchards of life, which once finally discovered, can be planted and yield bountiful harvest for you to indulge in over and over…the sweet taste of your favorite emotion?

That’s the mindset of a consumer.

At the most basic level of conscious awareness, we simply want to feel good more often than we feel bad. So when these preferable states (happy, joyful) are presented as the end result of some journey or process, or even as the resultant state of being engaged in said journey/process, we are of course tempted to try and find that perfect equation — that oft misleading prescription of “balance” — which really just lets you oscillate more and more passively within the boundaries that you set around what you prefer to experience.

If you claim to have that perfect equation, you probably wrote a book about it, and it’s sitting next to the dozens of others who claim the same lining those myopic shelves.

Let’s Take a Different Road

Upon deeper inspection, swapping joy for happiness is really just playing a more complicated game of trying to occasion a desired end state. And since it’s supposedly a journey (aka: a long game), we might not realize if it was the wrong call until late in life.

What we are really doing with this joy 🔁 happiness switch-a-roo is locking ourselves deeper into the prison of preferences….the attitude seems to be “if I just go a little further down, maybe I’ll be comfortable there”.

In order to be free, we have to back out of that structure, and take a fresh perspective on experience itself.

This is where YOGA practice comes in.

The way out of this Sisyphean spiral, where we hang the meaning of our lives on higher and higher hooks (until it eventually becomes out of reach and we fall into nihilism), is presented in the most basic unit of a yoga practice.

Come back to the breath.

The reason the breath plays such a central role in yoga is that it serves as a convenient and ever present bridge into the current moment. When we focus our attention fully on the breath, there’s really nowhere else we can possible *be * than in the present moment. The breath is always here, now, and it logically cannot be anywhere else (past, future), because it is understood (and experienced, either consciously or unconsciously) as a continuous process from the moment of our birth to the moment of our death.

And it is in that present moment where we have the opportunity to disrupt the pattern of identification with our emotional states*

Here’s a deeper way to think about it—

Generally, we tend to think of our “self” as a vessel with more or less clearly defined edges…there’s the “you” and then there’s the world at large (subject and object). And it tends to follow that the equation of living a “good” life is thus balanced by filling that subjective space with all of the most preferred things.

If you’re born as a prince, perhaps you can expect to fill that vessel with continually pleasing things from birth to death without fear of running out or losing interest. But the story of Gautama Buddha shows even those with such an endowment of luck are vulnerable to the same joy-erasing, happiness-melting force…

Impermanence.

The reaper that comes for all states of being, no matter how deeply rooted.

In our culture, the typical “antidote” to this ever approaching reality is ignore-ance. When we aim to “take joy in the journey” I think we are subtly falling into this tendency. Here’s how »

We may have become aware that nothing lasts forever, but we can still try to distract ourselves from this by always seeking something. You can avoid dealing with our grim friend there ⬆️ by fixing your focus on the way you want to be, keeping it just a little out of reach so that you never quite capture it. If you do, simply move the goal posts further out.

Look at your own life…how many times have we fallen into that pattern day-to-day? I find myself thinking sometimes: “Damn I’m so lucky to be here, look at how beautiful that ocean is? My life is so great, I am truly content and at peace.” Then, in the next moment, sitting in traffic: “Ugh why do so many people live here?!? I need to go to the mountains and get away from it all.”

Along this avoidant journey, we can content ourselves by indulging from time to time in the sense of “joy” or whatever other pleasure you might derive from repeatedly noticing that you are approaching that state, and forgetting that you never fully arrive.

I think there are two escape routes from this paradigm, both can be explored in a yoga practice.

Yoga is, at it’s core, a practice of repeatedly arriving at the present moment.

»»Find the breath

»»Move in rhythm

»»Focus the attention

»»Create steadiness of mind

»»Challenge that steadiness

»»Notice if it slips

»»Bring it back when it does

Simple right? Of course it doesn’t feel simple in practice, but it actually is quite simple. The radical thing, though, is that from that place of arrival — from that present moment, we can find those two escape routes.

1. Breaking the assumption that we ever “possess” the experiences we have.

   1. Whatever appears (tension in the hamstring, distraction in the mind) breathe into it, and try to let it go (embodying the space left behind).

2. Learning to identify oneself as a part of the matrix of conscious experience, rather than as a separate vessel (navigating within it).

   1. Feel ourselves as the actual threads of the tapestry, rather than as critters walking over it.

Instead of approaching joy as an externalized state (like something that bubbles up in some mountain spring far away that we can go and drink from if we traverse the landscape just right) we can think of ourselves as the space in which joy occurs (and all things occur, really).

In yoga—

Tangibly, we are aligning and strengthening our bodies to permit more air in our lungs and sustain the experience of physical freedom, where deeper attention to the moment can occur.

Less tangibly, we are clearing out stagnant energy (think: ideas, concepts, and “agreements” about yourself and the world that you’ve been holding on to, without realizing perhaps) that can get in the way of free flow and interfacing with whatever the present moment provides.

Least tangibly, we are opening up the chance for the deep concentration that leads to the center-less awareness where bliss, love, and JOY arise. Be the space where all things occur.

Progression of the Eight Limbs of Yoga

The eight limbs of yoga are often presented as a pathway, with a crescendo at the end where one experiences nirvana—total and complete bliss. It’s described in various ways depending on your culture and religious leanings, as: union with the Divine, pure presence, or just plain unending happiness and ecstasy.

1. Yamas — abstinences and guidelines meant to prevent the build up of negative energies in your life force and manage how you relate to others.

   Think: not drinking alcohol for a week to let your liver process all the other toxins it needs to work on daily to keep your body functioning well.

2. Niyamas — observances meant to refine one’s understanding of their inner nature and to grow the qualities needed to sustain presence despite myriad distractions.

   Think: embracing discomfort, fostering discipline.

3. Asana — postures that challenge the body and mind to remain present and attentive whilst building greater physical freedom so it can sustain focus on deeper practices.

   Think: being able to sit and contemplate or meditate for long periods of time without physical discomfort requires strength and muscular pliability.

4. Pranayama — intentional breathing that calls the mind down into the present moment and allows the individual to process old energy and cultivate new.

   Think: when attention slips, return to the breath.

5. Pratyahara — withdrawal of the senses towards the inner experience.

   Think: what does the awareness begin to notice when the mind is more still?

6. Dharana — concentration and beginning to train the ability to focus attention on a singular point.

   Think: all I experience is the candle flickering in front of me.

7. Dhyana — meditation, or sustained concentration that leads to a state of total absorption.

   Think: no longer is there a difference between me and the candle (subject and object have blended).

8. Samadhi — that state of bliss, ecstasy or enlightenment, where the individual transcends the self and merges with the divine or universal consciousness.

   Think: resting as the space where all things arise, JOY is no longer “out there”…it is “here, now”…and so am I.

Work For It

So yeah…as you can see, joy only shows up wayyyyy at the end of that process.

During the course of daily life, most of us are dealing primarily with the first few of these limbs over and over, and over and over. An earnest yoga practice naturally orients us towards a dogged commitment to the necessary preparation for those end states to arise within the scope of our conscious experience.

By all means, if practicing yoga gives you joy, enjoy it! It is genuinely reassuring and contentment-generating to recognize that we are “on the path” and engaging with intelligently designed methods for creating human flourishing.

But if we fail to see the deeper insight — that the path doesn’t actually lead anywhere other than right back to the present moment — even if we do manage to arrive, we’ll inevitably leave in search of something else.