Can there me a measure of "joy"(not happiness),in suffering,I wonder.
This is a question worthy of deep consideration. It depends on how we define "suffering."
Simon Grimm: "It hurts to breathe."
Henry Fool: "Of course it does."
Maybe it also depends on how we define "joy".
There may be a certain kind of relief in finding that sadness, boredom, and dissatisfaction no longer cause you to panic, that we might find a weird kind of comfort in our familiar "dark place."
Professional comedians may try to make a living off being the comic, but the world is filled with comical antihero misfits such as ourselves, and just being ourselves is like having a front row seat in a Dostoevsky novel. The novel is inside our own heads, of course. I would like to make a distinction between the comical persona and the comedian. I find very few so-called professional comedians very comical. No, real life characters are often far more comical than those who try to commoditize humor. They often just read the script written by political hacks pusing some kind of agenda.
We face our misery and become familiar with our psychological quirks, knowing there are unpleasant feelings within us. Our humor and joy may come when we least expect it, when we are being most candid, most honest, and, yes, most negative and even unpleasant.
Maybe I have come to find such peace in studying math because it does not require me to be happy or positive. I want to understand something better, and it makes no sense to compare myself with anyone else. I'm not sure it is even possible to write anything without the constant awareness that our words require a reader in order to be received, and so much depends on the mood of whoever is doing the reading at the time.
Does it even matter what we write? Is it all not just so much squeaking?
The kind of joy we might find in suffering would by definition neutralize the suffering, transforming it into something that might no longer qualify as actual suffering. Maybe if we could just realize that living and breathng is one and the same thing as suffering, we might break through the lies promoted by the phoney society of good looks.
As you hinted in another post, while very attractive women, an older woman, say, like the famous Jennifer Lopez, may look absolutely ravishing, there is most likely a wretched ugliness tormenting her from within, a bitterness, a hostility, a totally phoney air of compassionate emotional maturity. To know the nature of what it is to be such a woman doesn't take a great deal of imagination. I would not want to be under her spell or to be obligated to do her bidding. I would not want to have to live up to her expectations or standards.
Might the kind of joy you seek in the misery of existence be something that lessens bitterness and resentment towards others? I have heard that the best revenge is to live well. I suppose living well might bring with it some kind of pleasant experience, no? What if living well means something more mysterious, like being able to transform our loneliness and our anxiety into a kind of ecstacy?
Myself, I transform the boredom and apparent drudgery of mathematical computations into a religious rite.
I understand that the only thing that really matters happens on a subjective level, inside the head, and there are no status symbols which can grant one understanding. A job promotion does note grant one intellectual satisfaction.
Our lives are filled with these contradictions. Could all society be a great lie?
I have tried to give some thought to your question, and since I currently feel i am losing the desire to express myself, I have taken some care in checking to be sure I am not totally full of shiit.
Is there joy in hatred? Can there be joy in suffering? Can there be joy in loneliness?
Maybe. If one is lonely in the company of others, there may be a secret joy in facing the fact that you are more content alone in your own company than with others. In that case, maybe the misery you feel when forced to interact with unpleasant or mean-spirited co-workers, could be turned into joy if you allowed yourself to hate them intensely, and to laugh inside at your silent unspoken curses toward them.
May we embrace our contradictions, especially those contradictions exposed in the words we write. Such contradictions will remind us that we are living creatures composed of water, blood, vile, and some fairly incredible processes regulating our circulation and breathing. We are not words.
It's possible that your distinction between joy and happiness, in stating that joy does not mean happiness, is similar to the distinction I find between the comical and the absurd. You see, there may be nothing at all funny about a true comic. The authentic comic is not trying to entertain anyone, not trying to make anyone laugh. The true comic cannot help but find himself ridiculous. his entire predicament is ridiculous. Perhaps the kind of animal a human being is comical by nature, jsut in the way we are wired, the way we encounter "the world." We are at once pathetic and terrified.
The most terrified band together in groups, gangs, armies, nations - like highly trained insects with the bone structure of our close cousins, the apes and the dogs.
The most comical are those most aware of what an absurd and ridiculous predicament we are in. The most comical among us must be the loners, the outcasts, the misfits, those who are not ideal progenitors of the species.
My study of math is an example of the comical, for I have determined that this is the most intelligent manner to pass my days away, not storing away for tomorrow, not working to pay for the coming of impossible to pay hospital bills. My study of math and programming has zero survival value in a world that could not care less about the contents in one's head unless, of course, the contents are incriminating.
I won't be able to pay for my own funeral. So, where do they put such bodies? I don't really care about that. I just want to study math. I don't feel compelled to make myself useful.
What matters is that I like to follow my own agenda. i don't want to report to any boss or any professor.
This makes me comical, and yes, it makes me a kind of comic; but not a comdeian, you see. I'm not trying to entertain anyone.
I apologize for any typos, and if I write
much nonsense. I am tired. Maybe I should not write when I am tired, but it seems that, lately, this is the only time I allow myself to express myself, when my mind is too tired to continue with "my agenda".