Pure Joy

Daily Meditation #363–2/22/2023

Perhaps this isn’t anything groundbreaking or a major epiphany, but have you ever experienced that feeling as if your heart will burst when you see others’ joys?

An elderly couple holding hands.
A friend who’s business is really taking off.
Your coworker sharing their first time on vacation as empty nesters.

I think it’s easy for us to occasionally fall into the trap of envy, and that’s really shortsighted.

We’re only thinking about them from our point of view.

That we are perhaps single or lonely.
That we are perhaps struggling with our 9–5, no business of our own.
That we are perhaps exhausted and overdue for a trip.

Let’s try to imagine from their lives, instead:

How many decades of struggle did that couple experience? Was one widowed? Did one experience infidelity and divorce? How many countless hundreds of struggles have they experienced just to be here, now?

The friend with the business — they came from nothing. No mother and a father who was barely able to scrape by, leaving them to do all the heavy lifting for their siblings. They worked a job as soon as they could while in high school and studied nights just to get a degree. They took on unbelievable risk and debt to get the business off the ground. Imagine the substantial fears they must’ve experienced. And now they are just experiencing the fruit of their labors.
“An overnight success,” indeed.

The older coworker, enjoying the first time completely alone with their spouse, seeing the world with no children there. Imagine the duality of enjoyment and heartache they feel — perhaps guilt even — as they try to figure out this new phase of life. They’re finally really relaxing, no children to feed or mind the safety of, probably for the first time in two decades. I cannot even imagine the level of mixed emotions that could have.

Envy is a Narcissistic and shortsighted poison we willingly take. Taking even a minute to try our best to imagine those people from the ground up — where they were, where they are, what they’re feeling — can be so healing to us.

We will have our own successes. Our own vacations. Our own little triumphs which will make someone else jealous, surely.

Let’s imagine ourselves in the world of others and their experience, and with it feel our heart filling up on behalf of them and their joy.

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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”