"I feel like a lot of people confuse joy and happiness," Warriors forward Kevin Durant
told ESPN [in 2018]. "I think happiness is a feeling that it's fleeting. It means
you can go back and forth all the time. I feel like joy is something
that you can stand on. And when you're enjoying what you do, you don't
mind the adversity, the tough times, the challenges. The little
obstacles you got to climb to get to where you want to go. I think joy
is something that we can always hold onto."
K.D. is a
cerebral guy who I take seriously. I looked up the dictionary definition
of joy to see if there was another meaning slightly beyond what I
thought: "a feeling of great pleasure and happiness." That is what I
thought, so I don't think joy is le mot juste, I don't know what the
word is, contentment (?), but Kevin is talking about things that I have thought and written about: "the wisdom is reaching"; "I wish you enough"; "effort,"
fulfillment, feeling good--a state "that we can always hold onto." That
is something beyond happiness or joy. I have written before--this is
just my feeling--that man at his best is man at play. The capacity to
laugh, to experience joyful moments, is, again to me, what separates us
from other sentient creatures. Only humankind is capable of e.g., the orgasmic convulsion of laughter the thigh slap of joy, doubling over with laughter. Only we are
capable of those moments but there is something beyond them that we also
can have, something that is durable that I can't put my finger on.
"[Joy] is not guaranteed, that's for sure. That's why we work on it, we try to. It's hard to work on joy, but it's the tone we've tried to set for the last five years. For the most part we've achieved that. ...Right now, you don't take a lot of joy out of losing."-Steve Kerr.
"Pursue happiness," "Work on joy": that's always what has messed with my head.
After a recent practice, Klay Thompson sat on the floor of the Warriors' practice facility watching rehabbing All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins take part in a 2-on-2 game. As Thompson listened to a question about the Warriors' search for joy, the 28-year-old shook his head.
"Had it," he said. "Lost it."
The three guys are talking about different things. For Kevin joy means "you don't mind" losing, in fact, losing goes into the joy; that's what makes joy, for him, durable. For Steve, the joy is in the winning. The "Warriors" "worked on joy" and "for the most part...achieved it"--because they won. For Klay, "Had it. Lost it.": not durable.
