Rejoice

A new joy – restore joy

During road trips we made up word games to pass the miles as the travel droned. One our favorite games was the prefix game. We pick a prefix and each of us took a turn, and it had to be a real-word, until somebody couldn’t think of one, and they were out. Think of “Mis-“. There would be: misunderstood, mistaken, misuse, and so on. Oh my gosh. This could go on and on, with none of us wanting to give up. The car would go quiet for 20-30 minutes … with us thinking the game had ended, when suddenly someone would yell something like “misaligned”, then everyone who had been holding a word in the back yelled their out, and start again. Luckily none of us had service in the middle of nowhere so we couldn’t cheat.

The there was “re-“, with: Relent, recoil, renew, and so on. When we got to rejoice, we’d have the debate, was that a pre-fix or not.

“re- “

Just two letters change the entire meaning of a word. When put at the front of a word, according to the dictionary, it is:

word-forming element meaning "back, back from, back to the original place;" also "again, anew, once more," also conveying the notion of "undoing" or "backward," etc. (see sense evolution below), c. 1200, from Old French re- and directly from Latin re- an inseparable prefix meaning "again; back; anew, against."1

Know that meaning, we debated if rejoice was a prefix word. Has anyone ever just “joiced”?

So when I thought about rejoicing this season, I was taken aback to the car game and all the other “re-“ words. And I look to see if there was ever a root to “joicing”. Turns out there is. “Joice” actually took root from the Latin word *gaudire, or the old French “Joir”, meaning bring gladness, or for a more basic meaning …. Well, “joy”.

So, to end the debate that raged for years in our car, all we needed to do was spend a little time in the giant un-abridged Dictionary we were all so familiar with in high school … or about 5 minute on “Google”.

“Re-“ is actually a prefix in that case, and rejoice means to restore joy, to make joy new again, or to bring it back.

So what exactly is joy? Does finding a $20 bill in an old pair of pants bring joy? Do presents spread joy? Is joy the same as happiness? Again, just a few minutes of online searching and you see a lot of people asked the exact same question.

When I asked, I found that answer in a Psychology Today blog where Psychologist Sandra Brown said:

“Many distinguish between joy and happiness by saying that joy is an inner attitude whereas happiness is a fleeting emotion based on circumstance. It is common to think of happiness as being dependent upon an experience or other external stimulus. When circumstances are positive, happiness results.

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.

Joy comes when you make peace with who you are, where you are, why you are, and who you are not with. When you need nothing more than your truth and the love of a good God to bring peace, then you have settled into the abiding joy that is not rocked by relationships. It's not rocked by anything.” 2

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I really like that… Joy and happiness are different. Happiness it that temporary feeling of pleasure. Some external incident brings some amount of positive feelings, but then decreases over time. Everyone says winning the lottery would bring them happiness, and that’s true. A lot of studies shown people are happy when winning large sums of money, but that happiness fades and they are back to normal levels of positivity.

Joy on the other hand is lasting. It is from within instead of from outside.

I had also read that Joy comes from connections to people while happiness is from momentary connections.

To prove that point, think about this example. When you put up a picture online and it receives positive feedback from a stranger, you get the momentary burst of dopamine. (Yes, they’ve actually measured it). It makes you happy. But that was only something momentary. The feeling fades as we wait for the next “like.” However, connections with a person with a lasting relationship brings a deeper happiness than the momentary “like”. It’s easily deeper in your soul than seeing a little heart or thumb with a numbers that count the clicks.

Can you really count those momentary meetings as friends, just because you are “friended”? Serotonin fades, but the feelings from lasting relationships doesn’t.