Joy in the Heavens

© 2000 Red_RAT Productions

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,

laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

—Rupert Brooke

Joy, a simple three-lettered word that can embody an entire philosophy of living one’s life. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language gives a markedly secular definition of joy:

joy (joi) noun

1. a. Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness. See synonyms at pleasure. b. The expression or manifestation of such feeling.

2. A source or an object of pleasure or satisfaction: their only child, their pride and joy.

This simple definition leaves much unsaid. The dictionary equates joy to an exceptional happiness; however, its true meaning for me lies much deeper. Happiness is fleeting; the author Mark Twain skillfully describes its nature:

Happiness ain’t a thing in itself—it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant…And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

I find the deeper meaning of joy at the spiritual level. Many religions help us understand the meaning of joy, as the following quotation exemplifies:

Joy is prayer—Joy is strength—Joy is love—Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. The best way to show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow.

—Mother Teresa

A foundation of joy at the center of my soul gives me the strength to deal with life’s unavoidable obstacles. To maintain that foundation I do not focus on the day-to-day doldrums of survival. I now understand we are riding a three-plus billion year-old ball of rock speeding at thousands of miles an hour through the unimaginable limitless expanse of the universe. A human lifetime is a mere instant in geologic time; I now refuse to waste my lifetime on anything other than learning about the complex, fascinating world surrounding us and sharing its wonders with others. Every spring I rejoice at the miraculously renewed life bursting forth from mother Earth. Watching a young child making some of life’s first discoveries, my heart fills with joy. In my studies of mathematics and computer science, I am awed at the preciseness of the matrices therein; I find joy in their perfection.

In contrast, a straight jacket envelops the joyless, deeply depressed soul providing a view into a hopeless gray haze. Enduring the living hell of clinical depression is one of life’s most difficult roads to travel. A deep void separates the two states of mind, and the process of changing from one to the other requires time and events in one’s life.

In addition, another prerequisite to fully realizing spiritual joy requires sharing it with someone else. Making this point precisely, Mark Twain said, “Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” This could simply involve a chance meeting with someone on a mountain trail to enjoy a day’s-hiking experience. A much more complicated involvement, such as marriage, can dramatically increase the joy in one’s life, yet it can destroy it just as easily. Marriage has a bad habit of turning into babysitting for one of the parties involved. The predominantly superior quality of joy in married life makes me believe cautiously finding a compatible spouse is worth the effort, vulnerability, and entanglements.

For me, the cornerstone of a joyful spiritual foundation is a sense of purpose. The majority of the scientific community has summed up all of the religions that have evolved over millennia as myth, legend, and lore. To some extent I must agree, yet I cannot help but feel that a Supreme Being created our fabulous universe. I reject the notion that we exist by chance. My purpose in life is to gather knowledge; I then use it to help my family and friends have a better life while helping them to see the beauty of the world around them.

In closing, I define joy as gazing into the heaven’s starry night with amazement. I wonder how it all exists; I know we are here for some reason. I find it exhilarating!

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.

—Henry David Thoreau

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