Joy and Happiness: A Reflection from Within

Joy is not always loud.

It doesn’t always arrive with laughter trailing behind,

or a spotlight casting its glow on your life.

Sometimes,

joy slips in quietly—

like sunlight warming your favorite chair.

Morning sight of the first Otter this season to swim across the lake,

or that “The steady purr of my cat stretched across my chest is like a lullaby woven from stillness—an ancient hum of joy that anchors my heart to the gentlest now,

when your soul is finally at peace,

even if nothing around you is perfect.”

Happiness, to me, feels like a visitor—

kind and simple.

It knocks with a soft smile,

stays just long enough to be remembered,

and asks nothing from me

but presence.

I find it in a warm mug cradled between my hands,

in bare feet pressing into the earth,

in memories that once ached,

but now return with tenderness.

But joy—

joy is something else.

It’s rooted deeper.

It doesn’t drift when life shifts.

It stays like a secret rhythm beneath the noise,

a hum only the heart can hear.

Joy lives where love has taken root—

in trust,

in surrender,

in knowing that beauty can still bloom

even in the middle of pain.

There was a time I chased happiness.

I thought it lived in milestones,

in checkmarks,

in the applause of arrival.

But life—

life whispered otherwise.

It showed me that happiness may sparkle,

but joy is carved into the soul.

That I don’t need everything to be right

to feel light rise within me.

Joy taught me to stay.

To be still.

To breathe,

not with urgency—

but reverence.

Sometimes, the holiest moment

is this one.

This very breath.

Slow.

Present.

Unafraid.

So when they ask me,

“What is joy?”

I don’t give them an answer.

I offer them a moment—

a story,

a memory,

a pause that once held peace.

Because joy isn’t something I learned to define.

It’s something I finally remembered how to feel.