newspapers claimed that as a result of global warming snow might never be seen in London again, I woke one Wednesday in January 2003 and everything sounded slightly muffled – no pushchair wheels catching on the bumpy paving stones, no metal trolleys jangling against the kerb outside the shop. It could only mean one thing – snow. The only sounds which were louder than usual were the cries of children, suddenly inspired to skip to school, thrilled with the free entertainment. Working at home that day, I was distracted by watching snowflakes from my desk and wondering whether the snowflakes were fatter than they used to be. By the afternoon I could resist the snow no longer and my partner and I walked up to Primrose Hill, a small green park from which you can see the pointed cages of London Zoo and beyond it, London’s landmarks laid out in a line – the Dome, Canary Wharf, the London Eye and the Post Office Tower. We’d assumed that as it was a Wednesday afternoon the park would be fairly empty, but in fact there were hundreds of people. Reaching the flat circle of tarmac at the top of the hill, we detected something unusual about the atmosphere, different even from sunny weekends when people bring kites and picnics. That difference was the presence of joy – pure joy at the unexpected snowfall. Strangers were grinning at each other with the kind of festive, communal happiness you might expect to find on New Year’s Eve. People climbed the hill carrying cardboard boxes and plastic bags – anything, so long as they could slide. Despite the absence of children there was already a coterie of snowmen, one with tens of sticks for spiky hair. Three men had rather optimistically brought skis and were side-stepping their way up the hill, accompanied by a local newspaper photographer hoping to catch them in action. A couple were tearing off bin bags from a roll and handing them out to anyone brave enough to throw themselves down the hill. You could see from their smiles that everyone was thrilled. This was unexpected, snatched joy. And these weren’t children. The children were all in school, but while they worked, adults were out playing. A group started rolling a massive snowball. People joined in and moments later a snowball of James and the Giant Peach proportions was rolled off the side of the hill, soon smashing against a tree on its way down and disintegrating, to a delighted cheer from the crowd.
This joy was unplanned but provided we have the opportunity we all invest time and effort into the creation of joyful moments – saving up for holidays, arranging to see friends, finding somewhere nice to eat – with the hope of creating happy times. Food, sex or even a hot bath can make you feel happy, but there seems to be more to joy than the physical pleasure. Joy is all-encompassing, whether it lasts for a moment or for longer. One little boy I interviewed told me that after he had won a football match he had felt joyful for exactly three days.
If people are asked to list emotions, happiness is often the first one they name. Most emotions researchers include it in their list of basic emotions, but they tend to refer to it as joy because joy has more of a moment-to-moment quality. While happiness can be a background emotion, joy indicates the quality of feeling at one particular moment.
the importance of new sandals
Corblets beach was always our favourite – a large sweep of sand overlooked by a crenellated fort at one end of the Channel island of Alderney. When the tide was out we would lie on some sloping rocks, conveniently slanted at just the right angle for reading and sunbathing. When the tide came in, we would retreat to one of the grassy alcoves in the ferns leading up the hill to the fort (or we did until the day a rat emerged from the undergrowth and disappeared with my entire cheese and pickle baguette in its jaws). One July day in 1979, long before we knew about the presence of rats, I left my brand new navy blue sandals on a boulder just below the slanting rocks and went into the sea to argue with my sister. Later, forgetting all about my sandals with the special patterns punched in the straps, we spent the afternoon marking out a badminton court in the sand, playing frisbee and building runnels and dams in the sand. Slowly the tide came in flooding the dams faster than we could build them, but when it was time to leave the beach I was horrified as I saw the boulder had been submerged and imagined my new sandals washing out to sea. This story might have been placed in the chapter on sadness and would have been, had an elderly lady not come up to me, asking if I was looking for something. From one hand she dangled the sandals by their straps. I was delighted they’d been found, but that was nothing compared with my joy at discovering that the elderly lady was Elizabeth Beresford, author of the Wombles books. We were thrilled when she gave us a lift back to the guesthouse in her little white Mini. What might have been ‘the day my sandals were swept out to sea’ in family folklore became ‘the day Elizabeth Beresford rescued my sandals’. It was that transformation from misery to joy which had made me feel so happy; the possibility of sadness had made the joy stand out.
Back in the sixteenth century the French essayist Michel de Montaigne spotted the immense joy that the absence of pain can bring. On the subject of his agonising kidney stones he wrote, ‘Is there anything so delightful as that sudden revolution when I pass from the extreme pain of voiding my stone, and recover, in a flash, the beauteous light of health, full and free, as happens when our colic paroxysms are at their sharpest and most sudden? Is there anything in that suffered pain that can outweigh the joy of so prompt a recovery? Oh how much more beautiful health looks to me after illness.’
When researchers ask people to recount the last time they experienced joy, relief from suffering doesn’t tend to be mentioned. Instead the occasions tend to involve seeing friends, eating, drinking, having sex or achieving success. It seems that we don’t always notice the joyful moments we experience. The renowned Canadian psychologist Keith Oatley has experimented with different methods of establishing the frequency with which we experience each emotion. When he asked people to keep a diary and note down each time they noticed a particular emotion, he found that negative emotions predominated. If, however, he prompted people at random with a pager, asking them to note down the emotion they were experiencing at that moment, happy times suddenly became twice as frequent as fear or anger. It seems that we are more likely to notice our experience of negative emotion. Moreover the cessation of those negative feelings can lead to an increase in joy.
Researching joy is harder than it sounds. One researcher, Jonathan Freedman, found that people became distinctly uncomfortable when asked to discuss what made them happy. His research assistant found it easier to get people to talk about their sex lives than about joy, as though it were too personal a subject to discuss with a stranger. This reluctance to discuss joy is reflected in the paucity of language surrounding the subject. While there are plenty of words for feeling miserable – wretched, sad, downcast, depressed, dejected, unhappy etc. – there are far fewer words for joy. It simply isn’t discussed with the same frequency as negative emotions.
Within literature misery features far more often than joy. As the French novelist Henri de Montherlant said, happiness ‘writes white’. The same has happened within psychology. Although we all seek joy and many would say it makes life worthwhile, it doesn’t receive the same amount of attention from researchers as negative emotions like fear or sadness, presumably because they cause more problems. The eminent psychologist Martin Seligman has drawn attention to the positive emotions such as joy by pioneering a branch of psychology known as positive psychology. In order to help the subject along, a $100,000 prize is awarded each year for the best research on well-being or on helping people to flourish. Joy is slowly beginning to be seen not as emotion that it would be nice to experience, but one which is essential.
When I was walking home late at night recently I witnessed some more joy. A man with a German accent was walking along on the other side of the road talking loudly, but ecstatically into his mobile. ‘I had to call you. I can’t believe how happy I am. These fantastic guys were over from the US office, so we went to a really expensive restaurant in Piccadilly for lunch. Six of us, all on expenses. Such great guys. Here I am in my new job getting taken to fantastic London restaurants. We had all this food and wine and I’m being paid for it. This must be the best job in the world. I’m so excited. I’m so happy I can hardly speak.’
He bounced as he walked. The joy appeared to activate his whole body. It’s known that joy does cause the heart rate to rise. It also energises us, compelling us to stand up when we hear good news, in contrast to sitting down when it’s bad. With his particular interest in the science of emotions Charles Darwin noted a case of ‘psychical