Joy

We usually think of fun, pleasure, happiness and joy as being nearly identical. Not being the editor of a dictionary, I’m not going to be held liable for an incorrect definition, so I’m going to venture out on a long limb and try not to saw it off behind me.

All four of these words describe a sense of well-being; all four share a common positive experience. Fun, pleasure and happiness, though, are usually considered products of exterior events. A roller-coaster ride is fun (well, for those with great intestinal fortitude, at least). Pleasure comes from a good meal, great conversation and other human activities. The butterfly of happiness alights on the flower of our senses for a moment with the advent of a new love. But another flower calls and the happiness departs; the meal ends and we are presented with the bill; the ride ends and a sense of queasiness overwhelms.

Joy, I contend, is not like these. It is not temporary; it takes much to dispel its sense; it can be present even in pain and sorrow. For example, the joy of love may not be quenched in the presence of death in having loved the beloved. Unjustly imprisoned, one can rejoice in a clear conscience.

So what does this have to do with secret giving? Good question. I have found that the result of secret giving is fun, is pleasure, is happiness. But more than all these, or perhaps the sum of them all, anonymous giving is joy. It is a joy of the abdominal sort, tucked up under the ribs next to the heart where we experience the fluttering of new love and the excitement of cresting the Disneyland’s Matterhorn. But it lasts longer than the temporary thrill and outlasts the waning
birth pangs of the discovery of love. In memory’s eye, it can ever be fresh, turned over and over, worn smoothed with the remembering but still carrying the weight of the original. It is the deep and the high of human experience, plunging one into the well of goodness and raising to the soaring heights of all that is it is to be human.