Joy

Last Thursday, our mussar group considered the notion of joy.  This is not a trait like humility or kindness, for which one seeks the right balance, with neither too much nor too little.  Joy is, in fact, not a character trait at all.  Rather, it’s a spontaneous outcome, unwilled, a surprise, not produced on demand.  It’s a bit like a sneeze, although capable of lasting longer. 

Our discussion last week led me to think back at my own moments of joy.  Some of these occurred at predictable moments: winning a competition to join the staff of our college newspaper, my wife’s acceptance of my proposal of marriage, the birth of each of my children, and the first time I held each of my grandchildren.  If these events had not temporarily added six inches to my height and a corresponding number of pounds, I would have floated away. 

I also remembered the joy I felt when I checked into Michigan’s Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, 100 years after Mark Twain had done so, a few days after he had began his world lecture tour of 1895/6, which I was researching for a book.  Most of the hotels that hosted Clemens and his party during their world tour and most of the auditoriums in which he performed no longer stand, destroyed by fire or the wrecking ball.  But Grand Hotel (the hotel insists on dropping the definite article) remains.  The act of checking into it 100 years to the day after Mark Twain had done so gave me an intense rush of pleasure.  “Did you know that Mark Twain stayed here exactly 100 years ago?” I breathlessly asked the startled check-in clerk, who seemed to doubt my sanity.  But perhaps she was right.  Doesn’t sanity evaporate during moments of joy?  Doesn’t it suspend the everyday, workaday world, so that one feels temporarily unmoored, untethered from reality?

If we had not been thinking about joy for the past two weeks, I might not have recognized the moments of joy that I experienced during that time.  Here are a few.  (1) My wife and I were walking towards each other down the hall of our apartment.  We stopped briefly and looked at one another and when we did so I felt joy in her presence.  (2) We met old friends for lunch and as we shmoozed I felt joy in being with them.  (3) After bumping into an acquaintance on the street, we had an impromptu conversation, in the middle of which I felt joy in our connection. 

All these examples involved my relationship to others.  Even the episode on Mackinac Island involved my connection to another, although that person had been dead since 1915.  But not all feelings of joy need involve others.  A glimpse of a cloudless sky or a patch of daffodils or the blossoming cherry tree on the corner of our street can make me joyful, if only for a few seconds.  And whenever I reflect that I’m still alive, still able to feel, to think, to see, to hear, that I love and am loved, I am, in Wordsworth’s words, "surprised by joy."  But then, joy is always a surprise.  The trick is being open to it.


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