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People conflate happiness with joy. I can be happy and sad at the same time. I cannot be joyful and sad in the same instant, though I can flit between the two r
by vinceguidry 10y ago
People conflate happiness with joy. I can be happy and sad at the same time. I cannot be joyful and sad in the same instant, though I can flit between the two rapidly enough to occasionally cause alarm.
What you want to avoid is misery. I banished misery from my life sometime in my early twenties. I am unhappy somewhat often, but never miserable. Misery means not seeing a way out of the circumstances making you unhappy.
I believe emotional health revolves as much in how you see your emotions as which emotions you're experiencing. Reframing the emotions you feel can be a quite powerful experience for those not too jaded on the woo-woo aspect of it. "I didn't lose my girlfriend, we just weren't right for each other." If all you do is reframe, and never do any real learning, then sure, you'll end up miserable. But in general finding a way to reframe setbacks is a great way to find the energy to keep moving rather than wallow.
For some people, creativity is tied intimately to misery; I believe that people for whom their creative output relies on drug use are ultimately deriving it from misery. Minds need to be in a loose, free state to mix seemingly-unrelated concepts together. When one is truly miserable, they cannot see a way out of their predicament and so mind naturally finds a way towards that state. If they could see a way, then they'd focus on that way, and having a single point of focus is pretty much the opposite of creativity.
The most prolific creators make a workflow out of managing their minds. They'll tune out in order to become unfocused enough to get an idea, then they'll focus on putting that idea to paper, or electronic media or whatever. Good coders are well-attuned to such a workflow, but often don't think of themselves as creative, perhaps because their output isn't immediately pleasing to the senses. Artistic, maybe not. But creative? Absolutely.
- tedks 10y agoThere are certain culturally universal emotions; happiness and sadness are two of them, but joy or misery aren't, and I've never seen this definition of misery before in the literature. Is this based on your own framework and anecdotes or is there a source for it?
- vinceguidry 10y agoMy own framework. When I outline stuff like this, I try to be careful to situate them on easily-relatable concepts so that people who use different words for the same concepts can work out what I'm trying to convey. Not being a trained scientist, I can't really relate my own experiences to published literature.
- JacksonGariety 10y agoThere's one exception this rule regarding creativity and misery: philosophy. Here's my reasoning: if you're doing philosophy and you saw "a way out of the circumstances" making you unhappy (philosophical circumstances) you would be able to become a political theorist or a religious figure. The misery is mandatory if you plan on being truly (i.e. purely) introspective and avoid being compromised by the hope of external circumstances being favorable, it seems.
- dmichulke 10y agoInteresting distincion. Can you please also elaborate on the distinction between joy and happiness? Possibly relevant: there are languages [1] where you have two verbs to express states of being, a long-term being (e.g., traits of character) and a short-term being (e.g., when describing a behavior or a situation). Is this aspect relevant for your distinction between sadness vs misery or joy vs happiness? Finally, are native speakers of languages with 2 states of being happier because they learned to distinguish better those emotional states? [1] e.g., google for "ser vs estar <language>" where <language> in {Portuguese, Spanish}
- gerbilly 10y agoNot the original poster, but... Happiness: For me is calm, equanimity. Happiness can be sustained without negative effects. Happiness is not an emotion. Joy: Is an emotion which means it is more more intense but also shorter in duration. If someone was always stuck in a state of joy we might start to worry about them (mania?). Experiencing joy is pleasurable but clouds the mind, and is tiring if sustained for too long. Generally, all emotions put a cognitive filter on the mind: anger focuses the mind on a perceived threat and is known to exclude other information for example. True happiness unclouds the mind and makes it see more clearly.
- ufukbay 10y agoI banished misery from my life sometime in my early twenties. Could you please elaborate? I don't mean any personal details but maybe which methods or books etc helped you achieve that?
- vinceguidry 10y agoA combination of "this too shall pass," careful consideration of just how shitty the less-privileged really have it, and the realization that the only thing wallowing in misery was really getting me was more misery.
- Fordrus 10y agoMost interesting, I make the exact same distinction, but have the terms reversed - joy is what can coexist with sadness, happiness is sadness's mutually exclusive term, in my own in-mind lexicon.