This is why we can’t have nice things

How often do you truly enjoy something? How long does that feeling of enjoyment last? When answering those questions, consider this, to en-joy something means to be ‘put in a state of joy’ by that thing. So how often does a thing, moment or person put you in a state of joy? How long does it last? How intensely do you feel it?

If your answer to those questions is less…joyful…than you would have liked, do you have a sense of why that might be? What is preventing you from enjoying things, experiencing joy ‘because of’ things? What causes your experience of joy to end sooner than you’d have liked?

While there are many valid answers to those questions, there is one ‘truth’ which I believe encompasses them all. It is the paradox of joy.

The more we try to grasp joy, the less joy we experience.

We can’t hold onto joy. We have to accept its passing to make the most of its presence

Joy is what our hearts long for. It is greater than simple pleasure. When we chase after pleasure, what we’re really searching for is joy, its cheap imitation. There is an intimacy to joy. Joy speaks of eternity, endlessness, completeness, fullness, perfection, wholeness, shalom. Joy sits closely with contentment, not needing anything else in that moment. It’s a fullness of heart.

Pleasure, as opposed to joy, is satisfying a desire, a craving. It is a momentary release from the difficulties and tensions of life. It is a good feeling but nothing more. It doesn’t speak of deeper things, to our core longings, it doesn’t inspire. It is carnal, basal. Satisfying our basic hedonistic, biological desires.

There is a lightness and elusiveness to joy, an intangibility, a divineness, a tenderness, a shyness, a vulnerability, a delicateness, a gentleness, a softness. We can’t control it. We can’t earn it. We can’t demand it. We can’t hold on to it. It comes to us at its own will, not at ours. In order to fully experience it we must accept these qualities. As soon as we try and grasp at it, it’s gone. The moment we expect more from it than it has for us, we lose it. If we try to hold on to it, it disappears in a cloud of worry, anxiousness and discontentment. Joy can’t exist alongside these things.

We have an element of control over pleasure. We can ‘do’ a number of things which give us a momentary chemical high such as eating, drinking, taking drugs, binging Netflix or social media.

Now, we aren’t completely helpless with joy. We can influence how often and how intensely we feel it, but we can’t control it. We can build a life that ‘invites’ it in on a more regular basis. One where we spend regular time with close friends and family, are vulnerable in those relationships, showing our true selves and therefore feeling known and loved exactly as we are. One where we give ourselves time and space to just ‘be’, to reflect on life, to be present and be content with what we have. One where we undertake activities that speak to our souls, particularly when we’re not trying to ‘achieve’ anything through it but are doing it simply because it feeds us. As soon as we try to achieve something through an activity any good feelings are from pleasure, not joy as the very idea of ‘achieving’ goes against contentment. So play your guitar, but not with a view to ‘becoming better so you can impress people one day’. Do that for sure, it can be a great thing, just don’t do it when you’d like to experience joy.

Joy requires a slowness. In the Judeo-Christian faith joy is closely associated with the Sabbath i.e. Shabbat meaning ‘to stop’ (and a number of other things). The Sabbath is the day set aside to stop working, to stop trying to achieve anything, to stop trying to progress or move forward with life, but simply to ‘enjoy’ where you are and what you have right now. Sure, work hard on the other days, but just know that joy will only come when you stop. So make sure you do.

Now, I’m going to be honest. My inspiration for this post wasn’t simply to muse on the concept of joy. It actually stems from something I’ve included in a blog post before, but still feel passionately about. Both because of the direct damage caused by the thing itself, but also due to the metaphor it represents for our broader lives.

Those who know me well will know that I’m passionate about trying to help people ‘live life to the full’, particularly spiritually, emotionally and mentally. One way I’ve been able to channel this in recent years is in the areas of addiction and unhealthy sexual lust. As I wrestled with porn, masturbation and general lust towards women in my own life, one of the lessons I learned was this, “much of our sexual brokenness comes from a misplaced longing and understanding of beauty and joy”. I started to realise, that when I got that deep heartache and desire to have a woman that wasn’t mine, what I was really feeling was a deep longing, a massive black hole, that I wanted to be filled with beauty, intimacy and joy. Beauty has pretty much all the characteristics I’ve used to describe joy above.

I realised from this that what people term as ‘lust’ is often simply that deep black hole of longing that we want to be filled, being triggered by the mystery and beauty of another. We want to ‘have’ it, to ‘control’ it, for it to never leave. All the things that are incompatible with true joy and ‘enjoyment’ which beauty promises. It is by not understanding and accepting the difference between joy and simply pleasure, by settling for pleasure at the expense of joy. Due to this we try to grasp, control and hold onto the people who spark the longing for beauty and joy in us. Unfortunately, this typically leads to relational and sexual distortions such as unhealthily controlling parent-child and romantic relationships, emotional and / or sexual affairs or abuse, obsession with a person, rape, addiction and many other things.

The sad irony in this, beyond the pain caused to the victim, is that the act of ‘owning’ or ‘controlling’ or ‘having’ the object of beauty, consuming it if you will, particularly in the sexual sense, is that any experience of ‘joy’ is lost. Sure, you might get some physical pleasure, but your deeper longings for beauty, intimacy and connection will not be filled. This is because we only experience joy from beauty when it comes to us of its own free volition, when it invites us to enjoy it, when we respect its otherness, its mystery, its individual value aside from any relationship to us, when we honour it, praise God for it (notice, not when we praise the thing itself). So many then get frustrated that the object or person of their desire isn’t filling the void they hoped, once they’ve had it, they discard it emotionally and/or physically. They simply can’t enjoy it because they haven’t realised that what they longed for wasn’t physical pleasure, it was something that could only be invited, nurtured and tenderly grown.

The uncertainty of this is too vulnerable for many.

The longing feels too great, we want to try and grab the object of beauty, to hold it and lock it in a high tower where it can be ours forever (think of the princess locked away by a King she doesn’t love). And the moment we do that, it stops being beautiful to us, it stops bringing joy. To experience joy we have to invite the object of our affection and we have to be willing for it to come and go as it pleases. It has to be ‘other’ than us. Out of our control. What we can do to enjoy the thing of beauty even more is help it flourish. We get great joy by being the agent which helps beauty flourish, and great darkness by restricting, hiding or squashing its beauty. So encourage the person, or thing, recognise and champion its needs, wants, desires, hopes and dreams without feeling any sense of entitlement to enjoying them yourself. If you’re lucky enough to do so, that’s great, but otherwise be happy that others get to enjoy it, simply that it exists and the world gets to experience it. Be grateful we even have the capacity to experience joy and beauty.

So next time you see someone on a bus, on the street, on TV and your heart pines for them, ask yourself this, “does this pining really, in fact, speak of a deep longing for beauty, joy, fulfilment and contentment rather than a simple lust?”. If so, then there are two responses you should make:

1. The first is to recognise and celebrate the beauty of that person. Not necessarily to them, but in your own heart. Praise God for creating beauty and our ability to enjoy it. Praise Him for that person or thing which is beautiful exists, wish them well in your heart, pray for their flourishing and that their beauty would bring joy to many, to those that they choose to be around. Respect their autonomy, their right to choose who to share their beauty with or give their beauty to. Recognise that beauty is not yours to own but is yours to behold and receive gratefully when it chooses to come your way.

2. The second response is a longer term one. It is to consider what changes you need to make in your life to invite joy and beauty in more regularly. To recognise your longing is for beauty, joy and fulfilment in its broader sense and not simply in that person or thing. It is through this that our relationships will heal, that we’ll truly enjoy life, that we’ll break our addictions in all their forms.

A lust for people is only one example of countless others where our misplaced longing for joy is hurting us. We could also apply it to materialism i.e. the incessant drive to buy new things. We could apply it celebrity culture, binging TV and social media and on and on.

As a Christian I believe that ultimately that deep pining and longing for beauty and joy is speaking of something which can only be truly satisfied by God, the most beautiful, loving being in the Universe who offers himself fully to us at all times. Due to this true joy comes from being in relationship with Christ; through the gospel. Only through the gospel does the true beauty, the true love offer itseld to us freely and at all times, we don’t have to try and grasp as it promises never to leave. We are told in the gospel we could never earn it, but it is freely given. Therefore it retains its autonomy, its value, its otherness, whilst also being eternally ours. Through this the promise of joy eternal is yours.