The Immediate Society

To me joy is something that cannot be described or measured. It can come to a person in any sort of way and what might bring joy to someone will bring sadness to another one. I am very sad to say that very few people have joy in their lives, and if they do then it is only for a short period of time. Very few people experience joy thought most of their lives. Krishna is able to explain joy in a very interesting way “The joy that is passionate at first seems like ambrosia when senses encounter sense objects, but in the end it is like poison.” (18, 38) The largest problem that I see with joy is not being able to obtain it but obtaining it. This might seem a little weird but when people really get depressed and have no joy at all is when they had it and lost it. It is that feeling of emptiness that comes to them on overpowers them towards the point where it is almost impossible to feel joy again.

The solution that most people find for this problem is to feel short bursts of joy but never experience the real thing. This will not let them down if they lose it and it will be much easier to regain it. It might seem like the perfect solution but it only leads to our monotonous way of life were we are never sad or happy. A good example for this is procrastination. When a student decides that he has enough time and that he will leave his work for later on he enjoys the time were he doesn’t work. The Gita is also able to describe all of this in a simple sentence “The joy arising from sleep, laziness, and negligence, self-deluding from beginning to end, is said to be darkly inert.” (18, 39) The student will feel the immediate joy of not having to work for a few days but then he loses it when the last day comes and he has to cram it all into one night. His grade will be reflected and he has also lost his joy. This is not a problem because it is very easy for him to get it again. Unfortunately we live in a society that demands immediate results and until we change that we will never feel true joy but only small manifestations of it.