Local Perspective: The Heart of Joy

By Atascadero News · Thu Nov 20 2025

by Rev. Elizabeth Rowley Hogue

Let's start with a quick gratitude scan. Close your eyes for ten seconds. Name one thing your senses are touching right now, like the floor beneath you, the light in the room, the air in your lungs. Hold it like a secret. Now open your eyes and let it go.

Joy and happiness are not the same. Happiness depends on external events, conditions, or circumstances, while joy is more profound, eternal, and always available, like the Divine Presence itself, waiting only for our attention.

Looking at joy through the lens of the heart, consider that it is the quiet twin of gratitude, refusing to close when life hurts. It is not the absence of pain; it is the refusal to let pain have the last word. It's the crust of bread shared with another when that's all one has, the heartbeat that lingers after a hug, the unplanned smile that arrives right after tears. That strange laugh-cry moment we sometimes feel guilty about? That's joy breaking through.

Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning, watched everything be taken from people except one final freedom: the freedom to choose their attitude. He saw a prisoner receive a matchbox-sized crust of bread, break it in half, give the larger piece away, and smile. Frankl later wrote, "He tasted joy because he tasted meaning." The crust didn't change; the story about the crust did.

Science backs this up. Gratitude, even remembered gratitude, lights up the ventral striatum the same way chocolate does, releasing dopamine, which improves mood, reduces stress, and strengthens relationships. The heart remembers gratitude as an imprint on the brain that can be recalled and recreated at any time.

Frankl saw a man trade his last cigarette so that another person could have a single sip of soup. The giver's face, Frankl said, was radiant. Giving cracked his heart open wide enough for joy to sneak in the back door. Studies on heart-rate variability show that one random act of kindness a day literally builds a more resilient heart. Openness is not soft; it's physiology.

Joy, then, is the echo after the hug. It's what remains when the arms pull away and the warmth keeps humming in your chest.

Three simple practices to awaken the flutter of joy in you this week:

Name Your Crust Tonight, thank one overlooked gift out loud ("Thank you for running water"), then text the exact sentence to a friend. Watch the dopamine dance.
Give Without Return. One random act of kindness. Feel what happens in your chest before you know the outcome.
Three-Beat Gratitude Hand on heart each morning:
Inhale—thank… exhale
Inhale—you… exhale
Inhale—still… exhale
Let the echo hum.

Joy isn't something we chase. It never left. It only waits for us to remember the gift, stay open in the mess, and listen for the beat after the hug. So let's do it. Pick one practice.

The heart of joy is always here.

And so it is.

Rev. Elizabeth Rowley Hogue is an independent columnist for the Atascadero News and Paso Robles Press; you can email her at revelizabeth@awakeningways.org