The Experience of Joy

 

‘Joy: You don’t have to hunt for joy, manufacture it, or figure out how to lead a stress-free ‘perfect’ life. You can ALLOW joy to live alongside whatever else you’re experiencing. You can WELCOME it into the messiness of your life in every season.’

    This thought-provoking quote brought forward many different perspectives from our members. This idea suggests that we can be happy and sad at the same time, that we can experience negative emotions but still be content at our core.

    The idea that we can choose our emotions is an interesting one. Even in the midst of great pain or sadness, can we turn towards joy and select it, from outside us via joyful moments, events, or experiences, or from a contented secure peace of mind within? Can we reduce our pain by choosing joy over sadness? (much simplified in these words, of course, but in essence this is about active resilience, exercising the brain’s power to choose rather than be subject to random emotion.) If the brain cannot process opposite emotions simultaneously, then in a seesaw motion perhaps we can have some ability to monitor our feelings and to allow (accept, welcome) the emotions that are most beneficial to our resilience?

    Allowing joy into our lives is a practice, something that we can actively introduce even in our darkest moments. We can tip the seesaw towards finding joy regularly, whether we are feeling happy or sad, through resilience. Perhaps it is possible to ‘enable joy to arise and sadness to move to the background’.

    Many of our members pointed to finding joy in small everyday things, ‘breathing fresh air, a beautiful flower, a hug from a loved one or a smile’. Our minds are constantly full of thoughts, stemming from our emotional response according to what is going on around us or what is going on in our heads. Mindfulness helps us to become aware of this constant chatter and to be selective about what we allow in, and as a consequence, what we allow to affect our mood.

    Finding joy, for many of us, is about being focussed and absorbed in something that helps us temporarily escape our world, the trauma of our breast cancer diagnosis and the accompanying fear being all consuming at times. Physical activities and creative pursuits come top of the list as joyful experiences.

    A cancer diagnosis is traumatic and can be devastating, but without exception our members prove that it does not destroy us. On the contrary, it can lead to insight and growth. One emotion that we often talk about in our group is gratitude. This is something that can come naturally to us as we face our mortality, but it can also be nurtured and practised, and it can lead to an increase in joy and contentment. Some of us have experienced moments of deep joy even when in the midst of intense grief, following a bereavement for example. In the loss of a loved one, even when we are mourning we can still find joy and laughter in our memories of the life of that person, and we are reminded that the love we felt for them, and that they gave us, are part of what sustains us when we feel we can’t go on. Laughter is a natural stress reliever and can be a good antidote to depression.

    For some of us, choosing joy is easier said than done. We prefer to think of it as being open to finding light when it’s dark. Positive thinking in itself does not necessarily lead to healing (toxic positivity is a term we are all familiar with - being told to think positive and everything will be ok is NOT helpful) but we can help ourselves by actively looking for the good things around us and by believing that however bad things seem, there is always something good to be found every day if we look hard enough. Making a conscious effort to seek out joy rather than allowing ourselves to wallow in our misfortune is helpful for many of us. It takes work to be aware and mindful rather than letting everything wash over us on autopilot.

    One of our members pointed out that it was much easier to find joy as a child, before cares and worries became dominant in our adult minds. Perhaps becoming more childlike is a useful goal if we want to be more joyful? As one member put it: ‘Joy is a practice and a behaviour. It’s deliberate and intentional. Joy is an inner feeling. Joy endures hardship and trials and connects with meaning and purpose.’ It helps to recognise that all our emotions are fluid, we don’t just feel one emotion all day long, everything comes and goes.

    We can seek out the things that we know will cheer us up when we are sad, whether this is a hug from a loved one, a snuggle with a pet, a walk to our favourite tree - it will be different for each of us, but when we know what will make us feel better we can make sure to do lots of it. When we are physically and mentally depleted by breast cancer and other life events, we can find ourselves profoundly thankful for the simplest things such as the energy to take a walk in the woods or the appetite to eat and enjoy a favourite meal. This gratitude can lead us from pain to joy, or to joy amidst our pain. ‘Joy is in the heart and of the soul and it transcends.’