Finding Joy

My very first introduction to the author C.S. Lewis, like many others I suppose, was the book, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  I remember first hearing about the book when I was in school.  One of my classmates gave an oral report on the book.  For reasons that I can't explain, I never read the book during my childhood.  As a matter of fact, I knew nothing else about the author of the book.  Much later, actually during medical school, my wife and I went and saw Shadowlands, which was a movie about the relationship between C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) and American writer Joy Davidman Gresham (played by Debra Winger).  Davidman's death from cancer challenged Lewis' faith in Christianity, which was the subject of his book, A Grief Observed.  After the movie, my wife told me all about C.S. Lewis and his books about Christianity, some of which she had to read in Catholic school.

C.S. Lewis also wrote a semi-autobiographical book, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life.  While his relationship with Joy Davidman certainly influenced this book, contrary to common belief, the title actually is a reference to the poem "Surprised by Joy" by William Wordsworth.  The book is a spiritual memoir that describes Lewis' own faith journey to Christianity and covers his early life up until around 1931 (note that he met Joy Davidman Greshman in 1952).  In the book, Lewis describes his search for what the Germans call "Sehnsucht" (loosely translated as "longing, desire, or yearning"), which he chooses to call simply "joy".  Lewis writes, "Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing."  In other words, according to Lewis, there are two components to joy - pleasure or happiness (a positive emotion) and a longing or searching (an action).

I had C.S. Lewis in mind when I first read the Harvard Business Review article, "How the Busiest People Find Joy" by Leslie A. Perlow, Sari Mentser, and Salvatore J. Affinito.  They begin the article by stating, "Research suggests that to have a satisfying life, you need to regularly feel three things: achievement (recognition or a sense of accomplishment), meaningfulness (a connection to something bigger than yourself), and joy (happiness or positive emotion) in the moment."  

According to their own research, most professionals are doing very well when it comes to the first two requirements for life satisfaction (achievement and meaningfulness).  However, most professionals fall short when it comes to the third component, joy.  Importantly, the psychologist Roy Baumeister (I've posted about his research in the past - see in particular the posts about marshmallows and radishes and his work on ego depletion) published a study about a decade or so ago ("Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life") that found that there are important differences between "being happy" and "having a meaningful life".  In other words, individuals can be happy but lead a meaningless life, while other individuals can be unhappy but living a life full of meaning.  

I tend to agree with Baumeister, which is why I like the fact that Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito distinguished between achievement, meaningfulness, and joy.  However, bringing everything back full circle, I subscribe to Lewis' theory that true joy requires both a positive emotion (happiness) and an action.  In other words, we have to look for happiness, or even more often, we have to choose happiness.  According to Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito, here is what we can do to look for and choose happiness:

1. Engage with others: We know that one of the most powerful and consistent predictors of life satisfaction is having strong, meaningful relationships with others.  Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito found that shared experiences with our friends, colleagues, and family amplify joy.  In other words, doing the activities we love with people we enjoy is much better than doing those same activities alone.

2. Avoid passive pursuits: Again, consistent with most of the research that I've found on life satisfaction, Perlow, Mentser, and Affinito found that active solo pursuits (exercise, exploring hobbies, volunteering, etc) is much better than passive activities (watching television, scrolling through social media, napping, etc).  

3. Follow your passion: Consistent with my statement above (based on C.S. Lewis), we should actively search for and in some cases, even choose, happiness.  Activities that align with what we find personally rewarding are going to boost our life satisfaction, as opposed to the ones that we do because other people tell us that they are "good for us".

4. Diversify your activities: We can only get so much satisfaction and joy from a single activity.  If we spend all of our time on one activity, we are going to find that it gives us less joy than it previously did in the past (some call this the hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation).  As the saying goes, "variety is the spice of life".

5. Protect the time: Even if we find joy and meaning at work, we need to make sure to spend time for ourselves.  Free or leisure time is important too.  And importantly, people who experience more joy in their free time find more value and joy at work!

I've learned a lot about happiness and joy this past year.  I've found that we can choose to be happy, and in some cases, finding happiness will require effort on our part.  Once again, I will conclude with a quote.  C.S. Lewis wrote, "If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone."