Katie (aka Katydid) and Liam Joy

My granddaughter has always brought me Joy (“a source or cause of delight”) as have all my grandchildren (Matt, Austin, Nick, Ethan and Eleni).  Now, my Katydid has taken on the name of Joy, her husband Liam’s surname.  Liam and Katie Joy has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?

What is joy?  Is it the same as happiness?  J.D. Salinger, the author of Catcher in the Rye, once wrote, "The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid."  Can you figure out what he means?  I'm still working at it.

Happiness is an emotion in which one experiences feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense pleasure.  Joy, on the other hand, is a stronger, less common feeling.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta describes Joy "as one of the pivots of our life.  It is the token of a generous personality.  Sometimes, it is a mantle that clothes a life of sacrifice and self-giving.  A person who has this gift...is like sun in a community."  Helen Keller put it this way, "There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness."  And Mother Teresa adds, "A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love.  She gives most who gives with joy."

I sometimes wonder, after all,

Amid this tangled web of fate,

If what is great may not be small,

And what is small may not be great.

So wondering I go my way,

Yet in my heart contentment sings...

O may I ever see, I pray,

God's grace and love in Little Things.

(The Joy of Little Things, Robert William Service)