Causes of Joy

Yesterday, in writing group, one of our prompts was "joy." I had just read my daily email from the Cloud Appreciation Society, which quoted a research paper on tears of joy. 

Research shows there are four main causes for joyful tears: beauty, achievement, affection, and amusement.

Achievement tears are often shed in contexts of extraordinary performance or when someone overcomes an obstacle and often include feelings of pride. 

Beauty tears occur commonly in situations of overwhelming elegance or beauty, including nature, music or visual arts, and feature feelings of awe or experiencing chills. 

Affectionate tears are often experienced in situations including unexpected kindness or exceptional love such as wedding ceremonies or reunions and often feature feelings of warmth, increased communality, and feeling touched or compassionate. 

Finally, amusement tears are shed when something especially funny occurs and include feelings of amusement or lightness and the inclination to laugh or giggle. 

No matter the cause of joy, give yourself over to it. To paraphrase:

Be joyful unto Life! Serve Life with gladness. Come into Presence and recognize joy.

Gladness is one synonym for joy. Appreciation is another.

Citation: ‘A Model of Positive Tears’, Janis Zickfeld et al., published in PsyArXiv Preprints 08 November 2020.