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Maya Jabbari 

Voices Editor 

If you ask a writer what made them pursue writing, many will name other writers and their works who have inspired them so dearly and so intensely, left them speechless even, that they automatically, after putting down the book, knew who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do. 

This doesn’t happen for every writer, and saying it does is a generalization. But for me, that is precisely, to a tee, what happened. 

Before Zadie Smith’s book of essays, Feel Free, entered my life and into my arms, the questioning of my life’s path was all up in the air. But then, this very book, a gift from my teacher, Mr. Oconnoll, in my last year of high school, guided me in ways I almost feel were and still are magical. 

“Joy” on page 435, the last essay in Feel Free, is personal; it cuts you deep and forces you to question your life in ways both subtle and overt. Here, she examines the distinction between joy and pleasure in her life and asks you to consider it as well. And, don’t be fooled, it’s a difficult task. 

Smith approaches joy through personal life stories, cultural references, and philosophical reflection. As per her suggestion, joy is fleeting, involuntary, and often tinged with something beyond simple happiness. In contrast, pleasure is more accessible, more predictable, and often tied to consumption or personal gratification. Pleasure is easier to grasp; you can kind of expect it. Pleasure is reliable. Joy is not. Joy hits you out of nowhere and lifts you out of yourself. 

The thing about these two (joy and pleasure) is that, even though this is Smith’s way of distinguishing them, it isn’t everyone’s way. She doesn’t outwardly say that, but it’s there, you feel it, and your head and your heart float off somewhere else, to a state of introspection.

I used to think of joy and pleasure as points on the same spectrum, with joy simply being the more intense version. But Smith resists that idea. Joy is not just “more pleasure.” It is qualitatively different. Pleasure can be anticipated and repeated; joy cannot always. Pleasure often reinforces the self; joy, paradoxically, seems to take you out of self and into an unknown. 

Moments of pleasure are often easy to catalogue because these experiences are real and meaningful, but they tend to be contained. They begin and end within a predictable frame.

But joy, God, joy feels rarer, almost accidental. For these are not moments we schedule into our lives. They emerge, often disrupting the very structures we rely on for stability. Smith emphasizes this disruptive quality, suggesting that joy can even be inconvenient. It can arrive in moments where it feels out of place, complicating rather than simplifying our emotional state. 

In a culture that prioritizes consumption, pleasure is easier to market and package. Joy is not. You can’t schedule it, buy it, or optimize for it. And yet, in chasing pleasure, we sometimes convince ourselves we are chasing joy.

I’ve noticed this especially in how I document my life. These moments look like joy from the outside, but the actual feeling of joy, when it happens, is usually too immediate and too absorbing to document. It doesn’t occur to me to document them. And by the time I think about catching and holding the moment tight so it’s forever there and with me, it’s already gone.

If joy cannot be engineered, what do we do? Smith doesn’t offer a clear answer, and maybe that’s the point. The pursuit of joy, if treated like a goal, risks turning it into another form of pleasure and, with that, another item on a checklist. I’ve come to realize that that realization is both freeing and frustrating.

But no, joy can exist in times when I’m fully present without trying to extract something from the experience. These are not things you can force, but they are things you can make space for. Openings. This doesn’t mean rejecting pleasure. Pleasure matters. It sustains us in quieter ways. But confusing it with joy can leave us feeling almost unsatisfied, even when we’re surrounded by things we truly do enjoy. Recognizing the difference doesn’t diminish pleasure; it simply just puts it in perspective.

With that, I now ask you: tell me moments when you experienced joy and when you experienced pleasure. Distinguish them. Search for them. Long for them. And always look ahead.

Because, right now, writing my last article for this paper, I feel joy.