What does joy feel like?

I received a newsletter from Sulas Therapies www.sulastherapies.co.uk -

Roushan from Sulas Therapies is my EFT and Bach Flower remedies for humans teacher and in her newsletter she asked as part of a competition to email her and let her know what brings me joy.  I had to really think about that which really surprised me as I thought I would be able to answer that straight away.  Of course I can come up with the smart answer and could have emailed back to say "receiving your newsletter brings me joy"!! but I was actually slightly perplexed that I could not put my finger on exactly what brings me joy.  I thought that I would say that healing animals brings me joy - but does it really?  It makes me really happy to be able to help animals but does it really make me joyful?

I would have thought that I could say that walking in my woods would make me joyful but actually walking in my woods makes me feel lucky.

I absolutely would have thought I would say that cuddling my animals would make me feel joyful but thinking about that it isn't joy I feel but a complete wholeness and happiness that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside but that isn't joy.

I love feeding the fish in my pond and really look forward to the evening when I feed them and watch them and since I started with 4 rescued gold fish and now have hundreds I feel blessed to be able to watch them but again its not joy I feel but really happy to be able to watch the fish feed and grow in numbers as the years go by.

I definitely would have said that I would have felt joy whenever I get to see my best friend as we live 3000 miles away from each other so we don't get to catch up as often as most best friends do but when I think about when we do meet we are full of fun, love and laughter but is it joy that I feel when I see my best friend?  I am beginning to think that I really don't know what feeling joy is!

The description on google is that joy is an intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness - so I started to think through when I have felt exultant happiness - I certainly felt moments of sheer bliss when I was travelling in South America but was it exultant happiness?   Ok may be I can pin point joy to Macchu Piccu and also cantering handsfree on a beautiful horse in Argentina and arriving to the top of the mountains on horseback on Chile and looking around and all I could see were the Andes mountains for miles and miles - ok now I am getting it and beginning to understand the feeling of ecstatic or exultant happiness!

I have to admit I thought I was more joyful in my normal daily life as I do feel very blessed and lucky to have what I have and to be able to do everything that I do but exultant happiness isn't something that enters my life on a daily basis.  I reckon many people out there will feel the same as me - do you know what joy actually feels like?  It has taken me 24 hours of thinking about it to be able to put it into words in this blog.

I feel slightly sad that I wasn't able to pin point immediately the joy in my life but what a great thought process to go through - enjoy your thought process.....

suzxxx