Survive, Transform, Soar! – Issue #2

Joy VS Happiness

Article by: Sandra L. Brown, M.A. in SurviveTransformSoar.com | Friday, March 17, 2017

You were out looking for a little happiness when you stumbled upon Dr. Jekyll, as he was appearing wonderful and considerate. Strangely, before you knew it, evil Mr. Hyde was instead dismantling anything that resembled happiness, and leaving destruction and despair in its wake.

Despair is a long way from the happiness you were initially seeking. How did you get from mere happiness-seeking to a totally despairing life? How can you embrace the happiness that you set out to find?

It might not even be “happiness”, per se, that you were initially seeking. You might have been looking for someone who was introspective, spiritual and existential. But you tell me…

What Is Happiness?

Happiness is external. It’s based on situations, events, people, places, things and thoughts. Happiness is connected to your hope for a relationship or your hope for a future with someone. Happiness is linked to “someday when I meet the right guy” or “when he starts changing and acting right” or “when he goes to counseling.”

Happiness is future-oriented and it puts all its eggs in someone else’s basket. It is dependent on outside situations, people or events to align with your expectations so that the result is your happiness. These expectations can be seen especially during the holidays when, whether or not you have a Merry Christmas or a happy Valentine’s Day depends on whether or not he is with you, shows up, isn’t drunk, isn’t cheating or a list of other behaviors you expect for a happy occasion.

Unfortunately, pathology rarely obliges in that way. So when the relationship falls through or he isn’t wonderful at Christmas or you kick him out or he cheats again or he runs off with your money or he was a con artist … then your holidays were not happy and your happiness was crushed.

Unhappiness is the result. It’s a typical and inevitable result in pathological love relationships. After all, it’s the only way it CAN turn out. There are no happy endings to pathological relationships. You notice that The Institute has not written a book called, How to Have a Happy Relationship with a Pathological.

Chronic unhappiness leads to despair and depression. Remember the emotional rollercoaster you rode with him? You were happy when he was good – and miserable when he was bad. You were hypnotically lulled into happy-land when you were with him and in intrusive-thought-hell when you weren’t. Your happiness was hitched to his rear end. When he was around (and behaving) you were happy. When he wasn’t, your happiness followed his rear end right out the door and you were left obsessing, wondering and pacing.

How Is Joy Different?

Happiness is what you feel when he says the “right romantic stuff,” buys you a ring or moves in. But happiness is not joy because joy is not external. Joy can’t be bought and it is not conditional on someone else’s behavior. In fact, joy is not contingent on anything in order to exist. You don’t have to have him for the holidays to have joy.

Likewise, you don’t have to get revenge, snoop out his shortcomings, tell the new girlfriend the truth or anything else in order to have joy. You can lose in court with him, already have lost your life savings to him, watch him out with a new woman or live out of the back of your car and still have joy.

You’re probably thinking, “Sure, you can have joy in those circumstances if you are Mother Teresa!” Joy is almost a mystery, isn’t it? It’s a spiritual quality that is internal.

My mother, Joyce, had a lot of joy and I learned from watching her. Her pathological man ran off with her life savings, forcing her to work well past retirement. It forced her to live simply so she moved to a one-room beach shack and drove a motorcycle. For cheap entertainment, she walked the beach and painted nudes. She drank cheap grocery-store wine that came in a box, bought her clothes from thrift shops and made beach totes from crocheting plastic grocery bags together.

Recycling

Joyce recycled long before it was hip to do so. But what she recycled most and best was pain … into joy.

Instead of looking externally for yet another relationship to remove the sting of the last one, or to conquer the boredom she might feel at being alone, she cultivated internal and deep abiding joy. It was both an enigma and a privilege to watch this magnificent life emerge from the ashes of great betrayal.

I use her a lot as an example of someone who went ahead and got a great life. She turned this rotten deal into an exquisite piece of art called her life. Somewhere along that rocky path of broken relationships with pathological men, she learned that happiness is fleeting if it’s tied to a man’s shirt-tails. She watched too many shirt-tails walk out the door with her happiness tied to his butt. In order to find the peacefulness that resides inside, she had to learn what was happiness and what was joy.

Your Joy Belongs To You

The transitory things of life are happiness-based. She had a big house and lost a big house when she divorced my father. She had a big career and lost a big career when, according to our culture, she got “too old” to have the kind of job she had. She had diamonds and lost diamonds.

So she entered into voluntary simplicity where the fire of purging away “stuff” left a clearer picture and path to the internal life. When stuff, people and the problems they bring fall away, there is a stillness. Only in that stillness can we ever find the joy that resides inside us, dependent on nothing external in order to exist.

Joyce’s joy came from deeply held spiritual beliefs but it also came from a place even beyond that. Joy comes when you make peace with who you are, what you are, where you are, why you are and who you are not with. When you need nothing more than your truth and the love of a good God to bring peace, you have settled into the abiding joy that is not rocked by relationships. It’s not rocked by anything.

Joy has to do with the quality of US, not them. It’s a ME factor, not a him or them factor. Happiness may be external but joy is internal, and, in many ways, eternal. It emanates from within us and can exist even when the external circumstances of our lives “suck.”

Joy Can Be A Virus!

Joy can be infectious and can touch others when HOW we are has nothing to do with WHO we are with. It’s a barometer reading of how we are doing with ourselves and in our own spiritual development. It reminds us of how we are doing with managing our own outlook, optimism and future.

We may not have control over what he’s doing, who he’s doing or how he’s doing, but we do have control over how we choose to see our circumstances. This is the essence of internal joy—managing your worldview from the inside instead of taking your emotional temperature based on how well he’s behaving. How we are, or how our joy is, can’t be taken by a thermometer from his mouth. It has to be taken from our internal and eternal well-being.

When you are finally able to shift your focus of where and how joy is created, it is a mind-blowing change because you no longer hold tight to the reins of external control (“I’ll be happy when someone else does _________.”) You are able to refocus on finding joy in your life, just the way it is, with yourself and all your warts.

Joy comes from the right perspective when we tweak how we see ourselves, our lives and the lessons of our lives. When life is a spiritual walk, not just a relationship destination, we are able to see the lessons as part of the journey and the OPTION of having joy even in the midst of an unplanned disaster like a pathological relationship.

Joy is like a new eyeglass prescription—it clears up and crisps up how we see who we are on this journey and path of life, even while in pain. Your pain does not have to define you. That’s your choice. You are more than your pain.

And so is your life!