This is the second of two blogs on happiness, the first being on “Wanting and Liking.” Here I want to discuss the experiences of pleasure and joy. Know, however, that all four of these words (wanting, liking, pleasure, joy), and probably many more, are approximate ways of understanding this feeling of happiness. We know a few things about happiness for sure, but many more we have only vague ideas about. We know, for instance, that if people say they “want to be happy,” they probably won’t be…happy. Happiness is a result of action, not something that can be achieved by looking for it and trying to find it. Let’s start with a look at pleasure, then joy, and then happiness.
Joy
My wife, Deb, and I had a truly joyful experience last summer during the time we saw the total eclipse. Evidently, some 80 million people also traveled to see the eclipse. We live in Wisconsin, so it was about a 7 hour trip south to the town of Festus, MO, one of the hundreds of communities around the nation that provided opportunities for people to see the “totality,” as it is called. We picked up our 12-year old grandson, Gavin, at Bloomington, IL, about half way to Festus. When we got to this little town, it was inundated with maybe an additional 80 thousand people from around the country and Canada who had come south like we did to see this once-in-a-lifetime experience. The people in Festus were a gracious lot and had kindly afforded many areas around the city where people could park, picnic, and wait for this astronomical spectacle to unfold. We got there about an hour before the eclipse began to happen, and so we had time to meet some Canadians from Toronto, many Wisconsonians like us, and people from many different areas of the country. Conversation was lively and interesting as we talked about our various work, homes, families, and other interests that people had. Interestingly, we didn’t hear about what people thought of the current political debacle. Note that this was the end of a week just after the Charlottesville shooting, and you would expect some difficult feelings going around. But there was none of that. Rather, people were simply interested in waiting and watching for this thing to unfold.
The whole eclipse experience took a total of about two and a half hours beginning with the moon partly covering the sun, the totality for about two minutes and 15 seconds of that time, and then slowly the moon finishing its course until the sun was entirely available. It was surprising how content everyone was for those two and a half hours. But when the totality actually happened, there was what I must now call a “joyful community event.” Without any suggestion or direction people spontaneously and almost in unison started cheering, clapping, singing, yelling, crying, praying, and praising. Yes, praying and praising, perhaps even people who don’t believe in God as such. Yes, crying; not of sadness but of joy. This crowd of about 100 people in the small park area we had was unified in this joyful moment. Deb caught a picture of Gavin with a joyful smile that I have never really seen before on my dear Gavin. This was a moment in time—these two minutes and 15 seconds—this moment of joy–will remain in my memory, and dare I say, in my soul forever.
So what is this joy that we all experienced? Joy is one of those things that you can’t define. You can describe it to some degree, perhaps best done by poets and song writers. It is like the three undefined basic elements of physics: time, distance, and mass. We know what time is, of course, but physicists don’t actually define time, nor do they define distance and mass (mass is sort of like weight). Think of it: the whole of physics is based on something that we don’t define. But we know what these things are. Joy is like that: we know it when we experience it.
While we know what joy is even if we can’t define it, we know what it comes from. Joy comes from loving something and usually from having that something. The something that we love could be people, ideas, experience, or property. Today I spoke to a person whose deepest love is for Nebraska Cornhusker football. How silly does that sound? Loving a football program? When you love something like a football program, you aren’t even loving people because the people, the players and coaches, change from year to year. But indeed, this man deeply and dearly loves “Husker football,” as Nebraskans say. When they won the national championship some years ago, he had a moment of joy that has stayed in his memory and in his heart for 20 years, and when the Huskers lost a recent game they were expected to win, he experienced great sorrow. Joy and sorrow are about love.
Pleasure
Pleasure and joy seem quite the same. There is overlap between joy and pleasure, but they are not the same. So what is pleasure? If we can’t define joy even though we know what it is, can we define pleasure? I think so. Most people interchange joy, pleasure, and happiness regularly: people think that joy and pleasure are essentially the same. Just like wanting and liking are not the same, the discussion we had in Happiness I, pleasure and joy are not the same. We might say that Deb, Gavin, and I had the pleasure of seeing the eclipse, which then became quite a joyful event for us.
When I do an Intake Evaluation, which is what it is called when I first meet with prospective patients, I listen carefully to their concerns and desires. We call this the “presenting problem,” although I would much rather call it the “presenting situation.” At the end of my initial interview), I always ask people, “What is important to you?” I am amazed at the answers people come up with trying to answer this question. For one thing, many people have no idea of how to answer this question. It seems they have never actually thought of what is important to them. The answers that I have heard include: “the mountains of Colorado,” “my Harley,” “my 66 Mustang,” and “my house,” which are examples of things people value. Some people answer with more philosophical answers: “truth,” “honesty,” “integrity,” and “generosity.” Husker fans might say Husker football. Theologically inclined people often say, “God,” “Jesus,” “Mohammed,” or Moses. However, most people answer the question with some form of “family,” usually children, spouses, parents, and other relatives.
After I get an answer to “What is important to you,” I ask them, “What is your best hope in life? How do you want the future to unfold?” Here too, I get answers of things, ideas, experiences, or people. Much of the time, however, I hear people say they “want to be happy,” which almost always means that they are not happy. As I noted above, they probably will not be happy if their best hope for life is “to be happy.” Remember, happiness is a result of doing something that leads to happiness, not a goal one can seek. In other words, people are happy when they achieve something, do something valuable or fun, or engage other people in a profitable way. These activities make people happy. But what is happiness? And how is happiness related to joy, pleasure, wanting, and liking?
Recall that in Happiness I we discussed the experiences of wanting and liking that came out of Dr. Berridge’s work at the University of Michigan. Similarly, pleasure and joy are not the same. There are many experiences of pleasure in the world but only a few moments of true joy. There are different neurological functions that come with joy and pleasure, just like the differences between wanting and liking discussed by Dr. Berridge. Furthermore, you remember joyful events, but don’t always remember pleasurable moments: I remember:
- The 2.5 minutes of joy at Festus, MO.
- The joy Deb and I experienced spontaneously dancing at a piano bar while we were on a cruise ship, somehow invigorating a crowd around us to clap for our “performance.” It didn’t seem to matter that our dancing was less than perfect.
- The joyful moment we had together when we received the first few copies of the book we worked on for three years.
- Making a game-winning basket in my regular pick-up basketball game.
- Being in the delivery room at the birth of my daughters.
- Being with a patient who has worked hard to loosen an old hurt and become free of the pain that has been lifelong.
Joy and pleasure are not entirely separate: you can have both joy and pleasure at the same time. So joy and pleasure certainly overlap, just as wanting and liking can overlap. What we want to understand is how can we find happiness in life, and what does happiness have to do with joy, pleasure, wanting, and liking?
I think this:
- Happiness is a consequence, not something that we can find or get, much less something that can be given to us. Joy is also a consequence, not something to find or get.
- Joy is always related to loving something, the undefinable experience of loving or having something that we love: this could be ideas, property, people, or experience; or two or three of these things together. Some people true joy caring for property, while some people find joy only with people, ideas, or experience.
- It is pleasurable to have something or someone we love. It can, however, be pleasurable to just think about something that we might have, or perhaps remembering a time when we had something (or someone).
So what does all this mean to have joy in our lives? It means this: you are trying to find love. Not someone loving you, but loving someone; not the having something, but loving something; not the idea that leads to action, but loving the idea; not the experience that lasts forever, but loving the experience that lasts a moment and remains in your memory for a lifetime.
I wish you a life of much pleasure, much liking, and some wanting, and a few memorable moments of joy. Then you will be happy.
Further reading:
Johnson, R. (2018). Happiness I: Wanting and Liking (blog)
Berridge, K.C. and Kringelback, M.L. (2015). Pleasure systems in the brain. In Neuron, Vol. 86, Pp. 646-664.
Berridge, K.C. and Robinson, T.E. (2016). Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction. In American Psychologist, Vol 71, pp 670-679.
Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2017). The positive power of sadness: how good grief cures anger, anxiety, and depression. Los Angeles: Praeger Publications