The Pursuit of Joy

It wasn't until today, after a particularly stirring sermon, that I realized the problem with the pursuit of happiness. No, not the movie, the ideology. Today, the preacher explained the difference between happiness and joy. In a nutshell, happiness is when you become the "object" of life. For those of you that do not enjoy English, essentially you let life handle you. However, joy is when you become the "subject" of life. Essentially, you handle life. While there are various spiritual and psychological implications, I plan to just ramble, hence the title.

As a psych major, it is my personal opinion that depression is our modern-day plague. It is everywhere! In fact, I struggle with depression. (Go ahead and embrace the irony). In psychology, we refer to a possible cause of depression as an issue with locus of control. Essentially, do you feel that you have control over life or that life has control over you? If you feel the latter, then theoretically, you are at risk for depression.

While I am no psychologist, I have begun to recognize this problematic thinking in my own life. I am a bystander. When life sucks, I swim in suckiness. When life rocks, I head bang with the best of them. Thus, I have established my emotional well-being to be directly correlated with the circumstances of life.

At first, this seems logical. If your house burns down and you lose everything, depression would seem normal? If you lose the love of your life to chronic illness, depression would seem normal? But what if joy is bigger than depression? What if depression is only characterized by a lack of happiness?

Yes, I struggle with depression, but the real issue is I struggle with joy. Why? I haven't the slightest clue. All I know is that somewhere along the way I convinced myself that life's circumstances determined my emotional well-being. Here is the secret though...life sucks. Seriously, you will lose people that have invested in your life, you will lose jobs, you will lose friends, you will lose happiness, but will you lose joy?

So here is what it comes down to--and this is me paraphrasing the preacher--joy comes down to realizing God's provision and His promise. So yes, I can feel sad, after all, life gives us lemons. But joy...there is something to shout about--sorry I'm Pentecostal so we shout, not "rejoice in our hearts"--because God always provides and we always have the promise of eternal life.

So there you have it, my humble, layman thoughts on joy.

Peace & Blessings,
Brigitte