Vulnerability is the only means we have to build relationships, and relationships are the only means we have to experience joy.
–David Brooks
In one of my favorites of his columns in The New York Times, opinion writer David Brooks reminded us not only how happiness and joy are different, but also why being joyful is better than being happy—and, most important, how to find joy.
He makes the valid distinction that we’re happy when we’ve accomplished something, but joyful when we’ve fully invested our hearts in other people. In my experience, too, material objects and experiences often give us pleasure (that is often fleeting). Successes create happiness. But it is only relationships that bring us true joy. Watching our children’s faces as they take their first steps, graduate, or get married, for example, we can see their happiness—but we mothers, fathers, and grandparents feel the joy that comes from pure and absolute love.
As David Brooks points out, friendships are also vital sources of joy—but only if we are able to be emotionally honest and vulnerable enough to feel deep affection.
In this day and age, this seems even harder to achieve than it was in 2019, when this column was first published. Post-COVID, our cultural and political values have become even more polarized, making it more challenging to maintain relationships, much less to let alone create the vulnerability that fosters genuine closeness. Also, with the proliferation of smartphones and social media it is even easier to hide behind the façade of curated posts and superficial, carefully crafted digital messages.
With everything going on in today’s world, however, we are all craving more joy. Following David Brooks’s advice, all of us have to make the effort to cultivate the kinds of emotionally honest relationships that will bring this into our lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/happiness-joy-emotion.html