Joy (pt. 3)

You are for joy, because it both feels good, and is good.

That, really, is so eminently enough, that if you find it an inadequate explanation of your purpose or presence, you ought to check to see if you have been generous enough with the meanings you ascribe to something ‘feeling good’ and ‘being good’.

What more, on the positive side, would you ask than to be such, and to have been given such, that you may feel joy?

Granted, on the other side of things, you could sure use less hatred, suffering and infirmity. And you might oppose and avoid hatred as best as you are able. And you might, in numerous specific contexts, oppose and avoid suffering and infirmity. But finding and stating an overarching purpose, and seeking and even finding the fulfillment of that purpose, cannot ultimately be about eliminating hatred, suffering or infirmity.

Such things actually never go away, for one thing because your perception of them would always be relative to their prevalence in the life you had led up to the point at which you encountered a particular manifestation of them.

This is not to say that the torture of the longsuffering is meaningfully equivalent to the inconvenience of the otherwise pleasantly pleased. It is not. But that statement is made within the context of yours and my understandings of what it is to be tortured or inconvenienced. Other and better understandings of what unacceptable harm is are certainly possible.