3 Ways We Manufacture Joy
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When I speak of joy what I am really trying to capture is authentic joy. I believe that the most authentic joy can not be planned or created. It lives in the spontaneous, the novel, the unexpected, even the familiar.
A loved one’s smile.
A bird at the feeder.
The taste of a *particularly* good cup of tea.
Authentic joy creeps up on us when we aren’t trying to create it.
And yet, there is another type of joy, manufactured joy, the joy we are constantly striving to create.
How Do We Manufacture Joy?
We are systematically hounded with thousands of media messages daily and these messages tell us that we can only access joy in three ways.
- Productivity: The idea of constantly being in motion, creating something, working towards something, having goals, a career plan, a family plan, a life plan, any plan. Productivity concerns what you can create in the now and the future.
- Consumption: The purchasing or use of services, products, experiences and sensory items, including food. Consumption concerns exchanging money or time for something we deem as pleasurable (but may not bring sustained joy).
- Validation: The affirmation of our character, skills, feelings, experiences or other elements of our being. Validation is concerned with self-worth and self-love, or lack thereof.
We’re told joy MUST be produced or bought or given to us in some way. But what happens when we have the access and privilege to do nothing? What happens when we stop being productive, when we stop consuming and when we stop basing our worth on the validation of others? When we truly stop, we notice authentic joy can not be manufactured. Joy can not be made, bought or given in the way we are led to believe.
If you’ve started embracing authentic joy, you may have begun to notice small moments that are joyful. You may experience these small moments often enough to realise that there is an authentic joy that happens in the mundane. This joy can not be re-created, it can not be easily manufactured. This authentic joy comes when we aren’t chasing it, it comes when we take a pause to notice it internally; how we feel it, smell it, taste it, see it, touch it, experience it. Authentic joy is internal.
I’m not suggesting that some sense of joy can not be manufactured from being productive or being validated, and I’m not saying that joy can not be bought, because some joy can. But, how real is that joy? How long does it last? How do we sustain it? How does it compare to the intimate little moments we don’t manufacture?
My answer to these questions is this; joy that is created from productivity, consumption and validation feels real but it isn’t always real because we manufacture it. It usually doesn’t last very long, and to sustain it we chase more of it. But when we notice authentic joy in little everyday moments, we don’t necessarily chase more of those moments, we just exist in the stillness of joy, soak it up and carry on with the day until the next joyful moment is noticed. And as time goes on, we learn to be more aware of these moments, we revert inward to notice the simple external things that bring joy. We begin to live in the moment, connect to ourselves, people and planet.
Manufactured joy is not of the now, it is of the past and it is of the future. Authentic joy is of the present and this is why it is the most authentic.
