Of joy

The Greek playwright, Sophocles, says: Il n'y a pas de plus grande joie que celle qu'on n'attend pas. (Antigone). (There is no greater joy than an unexpected one.). I would any day prefer Lamartine's description of happiness were it not for my extreme dislike for his politics: Heureux le poete insensible; Son luth n'est point baigne de pleurs. (Happy the unfeeling poet, His lute is not bathed in tears.) But I do not have to choose, since one is about joy, the other about happiness. Joy is intense gratification linked directly and perceptibly with an objective development, while happiness is a prolonged state of satisfaction at one's place in the world and the material surplus derived from it.

What about Faiz? Ho chuka khatm ahd-e-hijr-o-wisaal, Zindigi mein mazaa nahin baaqi. Or Ghalib? Wida-o-wasl judagana lazzatay daarad; Hazaar baar buro, sad hazaar baar bia. (Parting and meeting each has its own pleasure; Go a thousand times and come back a hundred thousand times.) What a pity, poetry cannot come across even in prose; But let us leave aside the joys of sexual love which is strictly a matter between two individuals.