One of the most wonderful gifts of humanity is the ability to communicate with one another through language. Over time our individual lexicons are developed and cultivated through the interactions we have with each other and the words we experience in our day-to-day lives. We start to understand the meaning of basic words based on the experiences we have surrounding them.

When I first started to look for joy, I realized that the word “joy” had taken up a lot of space in my life, yet I never thought to try and understand what it truly meant. “Joy” seemed like an amorphous being that lived in its own private universe far from the prying eyes of its owner. So I tried to find a clearer definition of “joy” for myself, and along the way, I discovered that, according to author and designer Ingrid Fetell Lee, psychologists define joy as “an intense, momentary experience of positive emotion.” And I thought, “Yes. That sounds about right.” 

But as I started to journey farther on my quest for finding and reactivating my joy, something about that definition didn’t fully encompass the meaning that I was finding within the word itself. I started to find my own definition of “joy” and all the ways I knew to describe it.

For me, joy can only exist with positivity at its core. One of the most magical ways to experience joy is to share the things that bring me joy with someone who I think will be inspired to use that joy and create something new and exciting with it. Joy is generous, generative, and equitable. When one person connects with their joy, the possibility of it being spread is increased exponentially because of our inherent want to share that joy with the people we care about. So, when we share our own joy, we are simultaneously making the world a more joyous place.

Here are some of the things that currently define and describe “joy” in my life:

1. The moment when I taste something for the first time and it makes me immediately want to take another bite
2. Being given a meaningful gift and wanting to find something just as meaningful to give in return
3. The precise moment when I hear the opening beats of my favorite song (Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”) and immediately smiling and dancing along
4. Taking a walk and noticing a new path that I haven’t taken before and discovering a new sanctuary
5. Dory singing “Just Keep Swimming” as she goads Marlin to swim into the dark depths of an underwater trench
6. Calling a friend and simply having a moment where we share space for one another and catch up with each other’s lives
7. Seeing a deer walk through my backyard and taking a moment to enjoy watching the sheer majesty of such a beautiful creature
8. Dorothy’s scathing and hilarious one-liners aimed at Blanche and Rose in The Golden Girls
9. Taking time to pay attention to the world around me and find serendipity in the inspiration that follows
10. Hearing about the things that bring someone else joy and seeing their whole self light up when talking about it
11. Stevie Wonder’s harmonica solo at the beginning of “That’s What Friends Are For” with Dionne Warwick, Elton John, and Gladys Knight
12. A moment when the joy received is equivalent to the joy that is given

What does joy mean to you?