---
author: Big Think
date: '2026-03-17'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAMde6OjqSU
speaker: Big Think
tags:
  - joy
  - happiness
  - existential-grit
  - resilience
  - meaning-of-life
title: 苦难中的绽放：理解“存在主义的勇气”与“喜悦”的深层含义
summary: 本文深入探讨了“喜悦”与“快乐”的本质区别，强调喜悦的深度、韧性及其与苦难共存的能力。通过个人经历，作者阐述了喜悦作为一种“存在主义的勇气”，如何在绝望中提供力量，带来感恩、希望和对生命价值的肯定。文章呼吁我们培养情感的开放性和体验式的惊喜能力，从而在生命的风雨中找到不竭的支撑。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: psychology
area: society-thinking
project: []
people:
  - Kate Bowler
companies_orgs: []
products_models: []
media_books: []
status: evergreen
---
### 喜悦与快乐：情感光谱的两极，生存姿态的差异

一个人可以同时感到喜悦和悲伤，但却无法同时体验快乐和悲伤。这正是“喜悦”常常令人困惑之处。我的名字是凯特·鲍勒（Kate Bowler），我是一名历史学家、播客主和作家，我研究运气、意义以及是什么让生活变得美好。喜悦能够与最深沉、常常也最痛苦的情感共存，因为它是一种明亮、充满活力的感觉。喜悦有一种将所有破碎的片段连接起来，并让你在同一时刻放声大笑的能力，这确实是我认为它最有趣的研究对象的原因。我曾长时间地认为自己是一个非常不幸的人——（笑）——其实也不完全准确。短暂地，我曾极其幸运：在多年的不孕后，我终于迎来了梦寐以求的宝宝；接着，我在**杜克大学**（Duke University）获得了梦想中的工作——虽然这听起来不像是每个人的梦想，但我一直想做的就是成为一名历史学家，躲在塔楼里与书籍、滴水嘴和许多心怀感激的学生为伴。我与我的高中恋人结婚，我感到生活终于要开花结果了。然而，随后我经历了一段毁灭性的、充满厄运的时期。在漫长而痛苦的求医过程中，我被诊断出患有**IV期癌症**。在那之后，仿佛快乐已不再足够。我再也无法以同样的方式“计算”我的生活，因此我需要一些在**存在主义**层面更具“韧性”的东西——我需要喜悦。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

- You can be joyful and
sad at the same time,
but you can't be happy
and sad at the same time.
That's what makes joy often,
like, so confusing to people.
My name is Kate Bowler,
and I'm a historian and
a podcaster and a writer,
and I study issues about luck and meaning
and what makes life, well, beautiful.
Joy can coexist with the deepest
and often most painful emotions
because it is this bright,
enlivening feeling.
Joy has this way of binding
together all these broken pieces
and still making you laugh
at the exact same time,
which honestly is why I think
it's, like, the most
interesting thing to study.
I spent a really long time
as a very unlucky person.
(laughs) Actually, that's not true.
Briefly, I was extremely lucky.
I finally had this baby I'd always wanted
after years of infertility.
Then I got my dream
job at Duke University,
which does not sound
like everybody's dream,
but all I ever wanted
to do was be a historian
and hide myself away
in a turret with books
and gargoyles and many grateful students.
And I was married to my
high school sweetheart,
and I just had the feeling like life
was just finally paying off.
And then I had a really devastating season
of powerful unluck.
I was diagnosed with stage four cancer
after a really long, awful
stretch of begging for care.
And then after that,
it was almost like happiness
just wasn't enough anymore.
I was just never gonna be able
to, like, add up my life in the same way,
so I needed something
more existentially gritty.
I needed joy.

</details>

### 存在主义的勇气：喜悦作为穿越困境的驱动力

某些强大的体验，如喜悦，能够真正帮助你穿越艰难的时期，走向新的季节。这正是我所追寻的。人们常常混淆快乐与喜悦，因为它们听起来都像是积极光谱的一部分，人们简单地认为它们是同义词。这部分原因在于，美国人痴迷于快乐，我们拥有一个庞大的“快乐产业”。快乐开始看起来像是幸福感、自我关怀、蓬勃发展，甚至是孩子们穿着配套牛仔裤的样子。但喜悦实际上是更为复杂的事物。心理学家们对快乐（happiness）与喜悦（joy）做出了相当精细的区分：快乐是一种可定义的特质集合，是一种心理放松的状态，是“轻松”的体现。它也极具情境性，意味着它是累积的——在事情顺利时发生。这就是快乐可爱之处，但也使之非常脆弱：一旦有事出错，整个快乐的情绪就可能崩塌。

而喜悦，它不仅仅调动了大脑的**多巴胺**（dopamine）和更愉快的化学反应，它依然与我们的**压力系统**、极其黑暗的情绪、绝望和巨大的痛苦并存。这意味着我们并非在逃避现实，而是为之增添了另一层含义。喜悦是最强大的**人类情感**之一，不仅因为它甜美而短暂，更因为其巨大的改变潜能。它使我们更加**感恩**，更加**充满希望**。它令我们**欣喜**（delights us），也就是说，它让我们发笑。它是一种伟大的“存在主义的‘是’”（existential yes），提醒我们即使在最糟糕的时刻，生命依然值得去爱。它让我们能够以全新的视角审视现实，并且你也会有一种感觉：无论发生什么，我看到了这一切，而它们仍然是好的。

在**基督教传统**中，喜悦占据着一个非常特殊的位置，被视为一份恩赐，一种神圣的礼物。它是一种“超越自我”的时刻，信徒们会称之为**“超越”（transcendence）**。这是因为，从心理学上讲，它具有一种真实的“连接感”（bonding feeling）。你感到与万物紧密相连，这意味着你也能与他人建立深刻的联系；你也可能感到与神圣的连接。你是否在精神上、心理上以及社群上，都对可能性持开放态度？喜悦可以说是将那些看似无法调和的体验整合在一起的“全方位解决方案”。

而喜悦的发生，其大部分**先决条件**，实际上与我们作为“机器般的自我”（machine selves）所需的状态截然相反。有几件事反复出现，是喜悦发生的关键前提：我认为其中最强大的就是**情感的可用性与连接**（emotional availability and connection）。我认为一个渴望惊喜的人，更有可能找到喜悦。最终，如果我们想成为更喜悦的人，我们很可能需要放下手机，合上笔记本电脑，将自己视为一个能够**体验式地迎接惊喜**（experientially surprisable）的存在。

所以，快乐只是一种情绪状态。而**喜悦**，它是一个**故事**。它是一种你发自内心深处、感觉活着、身处此处、即使只剩下残余也感觉良好的一种感觉。这就是喜悦所能做的——它能带你从谷底攀升至顶峰，而这大多需要的是爱。我认为大多数人对喜悦的理解是错误的，因为他们认为它是快乐的“奖励关卡”。我认为，这对那些正在与抑郁症斗争的人、正处于丧亲之痛中的人、或者仅仅是对生活感到厌倦的人来说，喜悦绝对是为他们准备的。而且，我认为喜悦同时具备**情感性**和**存在性**，这使其感觉既“有韧性”又“真实”，是一种能够支撑你前行的力量。

<details>
<summary>Original English</summary>

There are certain powerful
experiences like joy
that can actually help you be carried
throughout a terrible time
and into a new season,
and so that's what I went looking for.
People often confuse happiness and joy
'cause it all just sounds
like the positive end of the spectrum.
They just think they're synonyms.
That's partly because Americans
are obsessed with happiness,
we have an enormous happiness industry.
Happiness will start to look
like wellbeing and self-care
and flourishing and
kids in matching denim,
but joy is actually something
much more complicated.
Psychologists make a
pretty fine distinction
between happiness as a
definable set of qualities,
as ease as a kind of
psychologically relaxed state.
It's also really contextual,
meaning that it's cumulative.
It happens because things have gone well.
That's what makes happiness lovely,
but also makes it very fragile.
One thing goes wrong
and you can topple the
whole mood of happiness.
Joy engages not just the dopamine
and the, like, happier parts
of our brain chemistry,
it still coexists with our stress systems
with really dark emotions, with
despair, with enormous pain,
meaning that we're not
escaping the reality
of what we're in.
We're adding another layer on top of it.
Joy is one of the most
powerful human emotions,
not just because it is sweet and fleeting,
but because of its enormous
capacity to change us.
It makes us more grateful.
It makes us more hopeful.
It delights us, which is
to say it makes us laugh.
It's this great existential yes
that reminds us that life
is still worth loving,
even in the midst of the worst times.
It allows us to look at
reality with new eyes,
and also you just have this
feeling like no matter what,
I see it all, and somehow it's still good.
Joy has a very special place
in particular in the
Christian tradition as a gift,
as like a divine gift.
It's a moment of being beyond yourself
that people of faith would
describe as transcendence,
and that's because you
feel, psychologically,
it has this real bonding feeling.
You feel very connected to everything,
so that means you can feel
very connected to other people.
You might also feel very
connected to the divine.
Do you feel emotionally
open to the possibility
of things spiritually,
psychologically, and just communally?
Joy is sort of the whole
package of bringing together
what can feel like a very
unreconcilable experience.
Most of the preconditions for joy
are actually like the direct opposite
of what we need to be our machine selves.
There are a couple things that pop up
over and over again as
preconditions to joy,
and I think one of the most powerful
is emotional availability and connection.
I think a person who wants to be surprised
is a person who's much
more likely to find joy.
Ultimately, if we wanna
be more joyful people,
we are probably going to have to, like,
put down the phone and close the laptop
and think of ourselves as being
experientially surprisable.
So, happiness is just an emotional state.
Joy is a story.
It is a feeling that
somehow in your spirit
that it feels good to
be alive, to be here,
to be put together with
whatever you have left.
That's what joy can do.
It can take you from the
very bottom to the very top,
and mostly what it takes is love.
I think most people get joy wrong
because they think it's a
bonus level of happiness.
I think it would be a huge relief
to the person struggling with depression,
to the person right in
the middle of fresh grief.
to the person who is just
frankly, deeply bored
by their life that joy
is definitely for them.
And I think it being both
emotional and existential
is what makes it feel gritty and real
and, like, something that will carry you.

</details>