Joy and suffering

Human beings know what joy is, because moments of joy happen to everyone. But precisely because it "happens", it is believed to be something that happens without precise reasons. But those moments illuminate life, revealing its profound plot. For some they become so important that the need for change arises from them.

The experience of joy can generate in the person a desire for change and greater self-care. In others, however, due to the fact that joy is rare and evanescent, there is the thought that it is so short as to be more deception than reality. Personally I believe that difficulties never completely take away the pleasure of living; the desire to live is stronger than the pain of life: “This makes us think that life wants life”.

Joy is that something towards which we walk and for which we are left with a pungent nostalgia inside: the thirst for a "beyond"? The human being is destitute and at the same time tends towards the fullness of happiness, because desire is constitutive of the human being. Desire comes from Latin de-desire, lack of stars; a cloudy sky hides the vision of the firmament with its points of reference and orientation which have been so important since ancient times, creating within a sense of nostalgia but also of new energy for the search for the road to travel.

Joy is a feeling that explodes inside: it is pulsating, propulsive, highly propagable. When the human being feels wonder, joy, he experiences a sort of deep immersion in reality, experiencing it as his fulfillment. We have pulsed with joy many times and for different and varied events. Joy could perhaps be defined as the nascent state of happiness, which is identified with wonder.

Combining joy and spirituality is trying to grasp the glittering fragments of the Whole that permeates us. An important reference is the experience of Francis of Assisi due to the singularity of his testimony which is still very current. The "perfect joy", which is spoken of in his "Fioretti", is a paradox: remaining, even in unjust suffering, anchored to the search for truth, transforming evil into good; the beatings received will become instruments of good because they are metabolized with dynamics of good. You can also suffer, but in the certainty of being able to take that suffering further. Turning our way of thinking upside down: to be "brought under" (sub-fero = suffer) to “bring towards” (ob-fero = offer) and find a direction that leads us out of chaos, fear and depression. Blowing on the mists of suffering to make them rise like offering incense. The joy there is perfect because it has the ability to bring life; that “perfect” comes from surface (tend to), therefore means existential tension towards the construction of a better reality, which may already be here.

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