Hopelessness and Joy

Living without passion, positive expectations, or enthusiasm can be painful. But feeling hopeless doesn’t have to be permanent. We all have our own definitions of hope and hopelessness, but the emotions we experience are real and valid.

Feeling hopeless may be a natural, universal response to personal and world events that impact our lives. It can also be a symptom of depression, adjustment disorders, and other mental health conditions.

Joy is a natural part of us, and we’re wired to feel it. If you’ve spent any time with a child, you’ve witnessed how much joy we’re capable of feeling. Sadly, many of us lose our sense of joy as we grow older.

I have watched a child clap excitedly when a garbage truck drives by. How many of us can say we regularly experience that kind of delight? It’s possible to find your joy and live it at any age; you just have to know how.

The first step in finding and living your joy is knowing what joy means. Joy is an emotion “evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune” (Merriam-Webster). It is a feeling of “great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying” (dictionary.com).

Other words for joy include bliss, jubilance, exultation, glee, and appreciation. You can recognize joy by the physical sensations it triggers, like buoyancy in your whole body, a tingling in your chest, or an irrepressible smile on your face. Joy creates a positive excitement that uplifts and expands you.

Emotions are energy; their job is to attract your attention to what is going on inside yourself in the moment, prompt you to make decisions, and give you the fuel to act. Feeling a tingle of joy is an indication that you are in touch with your true self. That is why joy is an excellent barometer for making decisions and setting goals.

Despair is a long way from the happiness you were initially seeking. How did you get from mere happiness-seeking to a despairing life? How can you embrace the happiness that you set out to find?

It might not even be “happiness,” per se, that you were initially seeking. You might have been looking for someone who was introspective, spiritual, and existential. But you tell me.

Happiness is external. It’s based on situations, events, people, places, things, and thoughts. Happiness is connected to your hope for a relationship or your hope for a future with someone. Happiness is linked to that “someday when I meet the right guy,” “when he starts changing and acting right,” or “when he goes to counseling.”

Happiness is future-oriented, and it puts all its eggs in someone else’s basket. It is dependent on outside situations, people, or events to align with your expectations so that the result is your happiness.

These expectations can be seen especially during the holidays, when whether or not you have a “Merry Christmas” or a “happy holiday” depends on whether or not he is with you, shows up, isn’t drunk, isn’t cheating, or a list of other behaviors you expect for a “happy holiday” experience.

Unfortunately, pathology rarely obliges in that way. So when the relationship falls thru, or he isn’t wonderful at Christmas, or you kick him out, or he cheats again, or he runs off with your money, or he was a con artist, then your holidays were not happy, and your happiness was crushed.

Unhappiness is the result. It’s a typical and inevitable result of pathological love relationships. It’s the only way it can turn out. There are no happy conclusions to pathological relationships. After Christmas and New Year, he will still be pathological, and you will still have the same problems you had in November.

Tune in and learn how to work our way out of hopelessness to joy!