Calculus of joy (again)

Joy is the sound of arriving at home and hearing children laughing. Joy is the smell you get when the pizza box opens, and the air is filled with just the right amount of garlic.

Joy is streaming music online and getting two songs playing, without some overbearing adverts in between.

The nature of joy is mostly confined to the century you live in, based on the popular practices of normal people. It would be a bit weird to say, nowadays, that joy is the feeling of sunrise in the morning, once you have been worshipping the angry gods all night, because they created the darkness.

Now, can you imagine those same people feeling jealous, because someone among them had spent more time exercising, and had better pectorals than the others? Body worship, and the stress it brings, is obviously a phenomenon of our age, regardless of how normal it feels to us.

But even in the world of strange things, centuries ago, we assume that the simple sound of happy children was still a blessing.

I think that, if we keep searching for these basic keys to upliftment, then we may live a life free from resentment. Doesn’t mean, though, that the angry gods won’t need to be worshipped, sometime in the future