Fun and joy feel good, but they are two different concepts that you experience in life.
Yes, even you. Even traumatized and depressed people experience some joy and fun, if only for brief moments, at some point in their lives.
Joy and fun serve two different purposes throughout your life. They differ in these 5 ways:
1. Fun is something you experience while doing something. You may be reading or physically active. You have fun doing something.
Joy is more passive than active. You feel joy when thoughts (good interpretations of events) cross your mind.
2. Fun breeds laughter. In fact, when you’re having a lot of fun, you can laugh out loud or even roll on the floor. Tears may run down your cheeks.
When you have fun you usually make noise. Think of people who ride roller coasters and all their screeching.
Joy is more of an inner experience, a silent knowledge of peace. You tend to experience joy as a feeling of satisfaction.
3. Fun is usually (but not always) a shared experience. You have fun with a friend or even strangers. You’re probably not alone when you do the things you describe as fun activities for you.
In fact, part of the fun is seeing the experience through the eyes of the other people present.
You feel joy inside. No one else needs to be present. Joy is completely an inside job unique to each individual. Another person’s joy may or may not be obvious to you. And you will not miss your own experience of joy.
4. The fun is momentary. You do something that is fun. And then you’re done doing the fun activity. Sure the memories can last a long time (even forever) but the event ends.
Joy feels like a sense of accomplishment. It is not a goal but a place where you arrive emotionally or maybe spiritually. Joy remains in your body, mind and spirit.
5. Fun is easy to describe. You share the details of the activity and others understand what you did. They may or may not agree that the activity would be fun for them. It doesn’t matter. It was fun for you.
Joy is more abstract and intangible. Others can look at your face and body language, and yet describe how you feel, define your joy, that’s not easy. Maybe it’s not even possible.
