What's the difference between joy and meaning?

I realized as I was thinking about my last post that the quest for meaning and the quest for joy are totally conflated in my head. Is it logotherapy I want to write about just the pleasure principle?

It’s too hard to answer that question in the abstract. A few specifics: children. dogs. flowers. the rabbit I saw in the yard today.

Children. Did I decide to have children for meaning or joy? Definitely joy.

When I was deciding whether or not to leave a man I loved in order to have children, I thought obsessively and endlessly about the role of children. Everyone told me that you don’t have children for pleasure, for joy. You have them for meaning. Perhaps because I was coming down on the side of not having children, I decided that my life would be just as meaningful if I did have kids as if I didn’t.

There are two major reasons why having kids can’t be the meaning of life. One, there are too many people on this earth. Really, it’s a selfish thing to do, having kids on an overpopulated planet. Two, if your life doesn’t have any meaning without children then all of life, all of human existence is sort of meaningless. My life has no meaning till I have kids, then my kids life has no meaning till they have kids, and so on. Human existence becomes a sort of treadmill, questing for meaning but never getting there.

When I met Andy and having kids became the easiest and most natural thing in the world to do, I still felt like they were not the ticket to meaning. Andy wisely refused to articulate why, exactly, he wanted kids. He just did. This sort of examination is fraught. You might say that I was also refusing to articulate why when I said it was for joy. But it seemed to me that joy was the very best possible reason to have kids. And I stand by that.

So Battle and Margaret and Andy are the chief joys of my life, but not the meaning of it. Not even the chief meaning of it. Which is not to say they have meaning. They do. But defining that is so enormous. Simpler to look at some things in my life that bring me joy and have meaning meaning for me but are not meaning itself to understand the difference of having meaning and being meaning.

First, my dog Belvy. A good friend of mine, who was having a dark moment, said of Belvedere when she was a puppy, “She reminds you of the possibility of joy.” In essence, that was why I got Belvedere. I needed to be reminded of the possibility of joy. It was right after September 11, I was in a terrible relationship, my life was not working out the way I had hoped. So Belvedere’s animal spirits had meaning in my life. They were not the meaning in my life. But her animal spirits were the meaning in her life.

Maybe it’s silly to say that a dogs life has meaning. But it does to the dog. The opportunity to express her leaping bounding gobbling hurray I am alive self.

I think that the wildflowers I’ve sown this year have much the same meaning to me--and to themselves. The sort of joyous burst of life. They are what they are, nothing more, nothing less. Just, boom, a burst of orange and green and pink and white and purple and yellow. Of course I’ve had to kill a lot of weeds to get them to grow.

I guess that’s why it’s so easy to lose site of the hurray I am alive part of ourselves as humans...it’s the choice we have in the matter.

So it’s the choice that gives meaning to human life? Since we don’t get to stop at the leaping bounding gobbling hurray I am alive part of ourselves? Or is the choice just a distraction, something that knocks us off course from the joy we could otherwise feel?

I had breakfast outside this morning and a rabbit hopped by. That is why I love where we live so much. Rabbits and coyotes and hummingbirds and hawks and titmice and so many animals come roaming by, but we’re not totally isolated in the country somewhere.

Did that rabbit give meaning to my day, or joy? Joy, of course. But it means something to me to live here, where we do. It also meant something to me to live in Manhattan. But I think that if I had to live in Memphis, for example, my life would be robbed of some of its meaning. It was too hard to be myself there. Somehow it is easy to be myself here. Or in NYC.

Maybe the meaning of life is the ability to feel that joy. I was playing with the kids in the car in the driveway yesterday. From there I could look out and see the flowers I’d planted, trees, and in the distance the bay and the hills. Lovely. I wondered if I could have enjoyed the kids in the car as much if I were in a suburban driveway. And honestly it would have been hard.

Would my life have had less meaning?

Does Belvedere’s life have less meaning when she is cooped up all day and not allowed to dig? Not allowed to chase a ball? Not allowed to snuggle on the couch? I sort of think it might. I am tempted to stop writing and let her out right this minute. But I don’t want her to dig up my wildflowers. Bringing me back to that tangled web of joy, meaning, freedom and choice.

The scene for which The Color Purple is named describes how nothing could take away the slave’s ability to feel joy at the sight of the color purple...

Part of the reluctance to link joy and meaning too deeply is that there are times when it’s almost impossible to feel joy, and we don’t want to be robbed of meaning at those times as well. Also, there are things that bring great joy to one person but may hurt others. Things that bring joy now and pain later.

But why did Tolstoy dismiss happy families as all alike? As uninteresting. Why does wisdom have to come drop drop in our hearts from pain we cannot forget. Why can’t it come from watching rabbits and hummingbirds and dogs and children?

Now I am conflating meaning not with joy but with that which is interesting, or with wisdom.

Bottom line is this: for me the meaning of my life is to be my best self. And to express it in words and actions.

Part of being my best self is being joyful. So joy--witnessing it, feeling it, sharing it, creating it--is a big part of the meaning of my life. But only one part. Only one part, or is that it? A question for another day. Time to let Belvy go dig. But not my wildflowers...