1. Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer who studied at the University of Cambridge. She also is a creative writer professor at New York University for a point in time. We should pay attention to what Smith has to say because of her creative writing background she finds different topics to write about that have a bigger meaning like her essay of “Joy”.
  2. Smith distinguishes joy and pleasure as pleasure is an instant feeling of relief at hat is constant for example eating and ice pop for seven minutes for Smith pleasure your able to feel in shorts amount of time and you honestly forget about it once its happen. While Joy is an over heightened feeling that you don’t want to lose. You don’t want to lose it so bad that it can bring forth pain. Smith child for example if able to bring her joy but also pain if she were ever to lose that child. Smith’s interpretations are pretty eye opening to be seeing since I never thought of pleasure as something that I was having instead of Joy.
  3. Joy is difficult to manage and live with because of the fact you are scared of losing it. I do agree with Smith that jo is difficult because it aligns with suffering you wouldn’t be able to feel any joy if you weren’t afraid to lose it since who wouldn’t want to be joyful its sort of like a drug once you have you don’t want to lose it. Smith uses her child as an example on how living with joy can be difficult. You have a mixture of terror, pain and delight when having a child (Smith 331). That child is such an innocent vessel that you are able to care for and as a parent compared to taking care of a pet you expect to die before you child however there the ever-looming fear of what’s to happen to your child the dangers of the world.
  4. Joy is an underrated emotion that we all believe we hold value and have an understanding of, so we think we don’t need to talk about it a lot and often. However, when we begin to read about joy, we see other people’s interpretations reading about it makes us take in consideration other views on it and we then begin to implant those views ourselves. When we discuss joy with others, we bring in different experiences that cause Joy my joy comes from my family and little brother and little things in life while for others their Joy is found within the sports, they play activities they run or even sitting in the comfort of their room. Joy is a universal emotion that we all experience at one point but never really think about and take time to truly reflect on it. When we think about Joy were actually able to reflect on it and find our true joys in life. It may seem like a small thing to take into account but the smallest things in life have the biggest impact on life.
  5. Smith’s essay overlaps with many of our previous reading such as Konnikova’s in relation to the relationships were able to maintain those physical interaction while also bringing forth Joy. Also connects to DFW speech since we also need to hold empathy for the people around us so that we can build connections and friendship if we didn’t we wouldn’t have anything to be joyful for. Joy also comes from the fact that we need to focus on our own happiness coming back to the mindset that we are the center of our own universe like DFW says when we focus on empathy.