Last week I felt something I hadn’t felt in a while.

Pure joy.

Not once, but twice – in two completely different ways.

The first time was on a crowded dance floor in Manchester.

Music pounding, bodies packed close together, lights flashing – and me, jumping around like I used to years ago. Not quite like back in the day, of course. These days I prefer what I like to call grown-up clubbing. A daytime rave so I can dance my heart out, be home at a sensible hour, and still get a decent night’s sleep without losing the next day to a hangover.

But in that moment on the dance floor, none of that mattered.

I realised I had a huge smile across my face. That wild, euphoric joy that seems to take over your whole body. The kind you sometimes forget you need until it arrives and reminds you.

It felt electric.

Then, a few days later, I experienced something completely different.

I was visiting the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on a day that felt like the very first whisper of spring. The sky was brilliantly blue, the air still cool but full of promise. It wasn’t too busy. Birds were everywhere.

We spotted a heronry, with pairs of herons perched high in the trees. The mothers sitting patiently on their nests. The fathers standing guard nearby. Quiet, watchful, steady.

Everything felt calm.

Later, I sat inside the Skyspace installation and leaned back to look up at the square of blue sky framed above. Just watching the clouds drift past.

And that same feeling crept over me again.

Joy.

But this time it was quiet. Gentle. Peaceful.

The kind that settles softly over you rather than bursting through you.

Two completely different moments.

Two completely different types of joy.

And it struck me how much we need both.

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The Problem with Chasing Happiness

We often talk about happiness as if it’s something we should constantly be striving for.

The famous phrase from the American Declaration of Independence is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. But the word pursuit can feel exhausting. Like happiness is something we’re meant to chase.

Something that’s always just out of reach.

And when we inevitably don’t feel happy all the time, it can feel like we’ve somehow failed.

But life doesn’t really work like that.

Nature certainly doesn’t.

The world moves in cycles. Seasons change. Tides rise and fall. Day turns into night.

Why would our emotional lives be any different?

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The Rhythm of Real Life

Most of our lives, when things are going well, probably sit somewhere in the middle.

Not ecstatic.

Not despairing.

Just… content.

Quietly getting on with things. Doing what needs doing. Enjoying small moments along the way.

And then, every so often, we get those flashes.

Moments of intense joy that light everything up.

A dance floor filled with music and laughter.

A peaceful afternoon under a blue spring sky.

These moments are highlights. They add depth to our lives. They remind us what it feels like to be fully alive.

But the other side of that emotional range matters too.

Because life also brings difficult moments.

Anger. Sadness. Jealousy. Overwhelm. Betrayal. Grief.

We often label these as negative emotions and try to avoid them. But they’re part of the same emotional landscape.

You can’t have peaks without troughs.

And those troughs often build something important in us: resilience.

If life were constant joy, where would our strength come from? Where would our empathy come from?

Our ability to cope, to grow, to understand each other – all of that is built through experiencing the full spectrum of emotion.

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Noticing the Moments That Matter

What stayed with me most about those two moments of joy last week wasn’t just the feeling itself.

It was the fact that I noticed it.

On the dance floor, I suddenly realised I was grinning from ear to ear.

In the Skyspace, I felt that gentle wave of calm happiness spreading through me.

And in both moments I thought the same thing:

How lucky I am to feel this.

Not because life is always joyful. It isn’t.

But because life allows space for all of it.

The wild joy.

The quiet joy.

The difficult emotions.

The resilience that grows from them.

All of it together makes up the texture of being alive.

And when we pause long enough to notice those flashes of joy – however they arrive – they become something we can carry with us long afterwards.

A reminder of what really matters.