Squiggle & Heart, No. 65
I’ve been thinking a lot about Sympathetic Joy recently, or Mudita as it is referred to in Sanskrit and Pali. It is one of the four Buddhist Brahmaviharas or “Divine Abodes” along with LovingKindess, Compassion, and Equanimity. It is the one I struggled with the most when I was a performer, and the one I have the easiest time with as a teacher.
One of my favorite things about living in a big city where every day is inevitably filled with people-watching (whether you like it or not), is that by sheer numbers you have a higher probability of witnessing joy in others. Whether it is seeing friends run into each other on the street and hugging, watching strangers interact with babies on the subway who are making eyes at them, or dogs enlivening… well… everyone, I love catching these moments. When I look back now, I see how in the earlier part of my career I practiced with these moments - easy to delight in - while I was working in an industry designed to make it impossible to practice sympathetic joy professionally.
One of the best ways to keep labor cheap, is to convince the parties at hand that they are replaceable and in competition with one another. The entertainment industry is built and run on this principle and it’s easy to point to the harm and toxicity that comes of it. When I think of the depth of the envy and paucity I regularly felt as a performer, it makes me both angry and profoundly sad.
Luckily, every moment is an opportunity to begin again, and I am discovering an endlessly deep well of sympathetic joy in teaching. No one prepared me for what it would feel like to see a student get into grad school, get their first job, get an internship or grant, or just feel great about their own work. Their success if my success; their joy is my joy.
While listening to a Jack Kornfield talk this afternoon, I was introduced to this beautiful quote from André Gide: “Joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”
Embrace joy - your own and others’. Spread it; pass it on. Your joy matters, and you have no idea where it is travelling, or who is watching.