Annoying thing I keep hearing people say: Happiness is temporary and based on circumstances. Joy is internal and based on your relationship with God.
Happiness is when someone feels mostly satisfied with himself emotionally, relationally, and in whatever other way that is important to him. This doesn't necessarily mean he has no future goals, or that he's arrived at zen. He could have plenty goals he wishes to fulfill in the future, which if he doesn't fulfill then, he will become unhappy. But for now, he is satisfied with where he is now.
This state is variable but is not just a simple emotion. Pleasure is an emotion. Happiness is more than that. It's a complicated array of emotions and realizations that float over his circumstances. Happiness takes into account all the wavy shimmering details as perceived by the individual. It's where the average of all his emotions bends toward satisfaction. It's not supposed to just go up and down all the time, but more the natural background on which your experiences accumulate. When you have happiness, you don't just have happy experiences - you happily experience life.
Joy is something else. It doesn't mean a person is satisfied overall, although it often results in greater overall satisfaction. Joy is when some special, out of the ordinary thing pops into your life and gives you this stab of elation and longing for something elusive and familiar, a unique and surprising thing that takes your outlook on life and pumps it with Vitamin C. And as C.S. Lewis reminds us, the spontaneous longing for joy is itself an episode of joy.
Anyway. Now that we've corrected that confusion, let's get back to reading The Martian.
Happiness is when someone feels mostly satisfied with himself emotionally, relationally, and in whatever other way that is important to him. This doesn't necessarily mean he has no future goals, or that he's arrived at zen. He could have plenty goals he wishes to fulfill in the future, which if he doesn't fulfill then, he will become unhappy. But for now, he is satisfied with where he is now.
This state is variable but is not just a simple emotion. Pleasure is an emotion. Happiness is more than that. It's a complicated array of emotions and realizations that float over his circumstances. Happiness takes into account all the wavy shimmering details as perceived by the individual. It's where the average of all his emotions bends toward satisfaction. It's not supposed to just go up and down all the time, but more the natural background on which your experiences accumulate. When you have happiness, you don't just have happy experiences - you happily experience life.
Joy is something else. It doesn't mean a person is satisfied overall, although it often results in greater overall satisfaction. Joy is when some special, out of the ordinary thing pops into your life and gives you this stab of elation and longing for something elusive and familiar, a unique and surprising thing that takes your outlook on life and pumps it with Vitamin C. And as C.S. Lewis reminds us, the spontaneous longing for joy is itself an episode of joy.
Anyway. Now that we've corrected that confusion, let's get back to reading The Martian.
