What is Joy? What is Happiness?
It may help at times to see the reverse state
In facing a problem; to elucidate.
A drunken night out with the boys is a ploy,
It’s a relief, an escape, not really joy.
The worst has happened they’ve given you the sack
Stony broke and unhappy, you’re on the rack
It’s not a reaction, it’s a condition
Not a state of mind it is real perdition,
It’s unhappiness personified
Trawling the shops for that extra-special gift,
To heal a sorrow, or perhaps mend a rift,
When a casual remark was taken amiss,
Is not really joy or happiness, it is
A means to an end, not an end alone,
A plaster on a cut, to a dog a bone.
Happiness and joy can not be generated
They’re spontaneous, if they’re to be rated
As highly as they deserve
The beautiful smile of your tiny daughter;
That first realisation at the altar
That no longer alone your view had changed
You were two, and your lives had been rearranged.
One of eight in a shell pulling hard on an oar,
Is a sensation like one, never before.
You open a door and the sun is setting
The sky is on fire like an artist’s painting,
Those are reactions, those are joy
It’s Christmas day and they’ve opened stockings,
To discover the fruits of all those shoppings,
The smiles, excitement, even the rapture,
That one finds on camera so hard to capture,
Like the light in the eyes of the very old
When their family’s round them and they can behold
Not only the present but also the past,
A relief from the dull life they lead, at last,
That’s happiness, it comes from within