How to be Fearless: The Four Kinds of Friendliness (Part Three)

The third kind of friendliness is called Sympathetic Joy. This is when you are made happy by the happiness of others. It’s surprising how difficult this can be–it’s actually easier to feel sorry for people when they’re down than pleasure when they’re up. Guess it conjures up all sorts of jealousy, old grudges, personal comparisons, etc.

Sure, it’s no problem when people you love/approve of/agree with win the lottery or fall in love. But what about strangers? People you don’t like? It’s actually possible to find within yourself the capacity to enjoy their happiness. I’m not talking about some kind of moralistic, politically or emotionally correct (ok, I just coined the phrase “emotionally correct”) situation. I’m talking about a genuine sense of warmth and delight whenever happiness of any sort enters this world, no matter who is acting as its channel. This world needs happiness. It needs love. Ease. Satisfaction. Contentment. The genuine kinds, not the kinds that come from “winning.” (Winning doesn’t bring happiness. It brings hunger for more winning.) When the positive side of the balance is weighted, we should rejoice. This is a kind of advanced friendliness. Imagine what the world would be like if we all worked this angle.

It’s interesting to note that the suffering of others is not the only thing that can cause your heart to open spontaneously. It can also  occur when we observe someone else’s authentic happiness. Human nature is hard-wired this way. Anybody who has ever cried during a soft drink commercial or at a wedding has experienced sympathetic joy. When my husband proposed to me over dinner in a restaurant, the lady at the next table burst into tears. Something inside us is deeply touched by meaningful moments whether they are in our life or another’s. There is a spontaneous upwelling of joy for others.

When others are happy, we have the capacity to feel that happiness as if it were our own. We’re not just happy for them, we feel happy ourselves and essentially there is no difference.

A good way to experiment with this is to practice looking for simple signs of other people’s pleasure. We don’t have to start with trying to feel happy for Osama bin Laden or whatever. If you see someone on the subway happily engrossed in a book, allow yourself to feel the delight of that kind of engagement. You don’t have to approve of the book or anything; don’t even pay attention to stuff like that–just check in with the felt sense, not the object that caused it. If some people in the news were rescued from a plane crash, take a moment to imagine the relief of their families and friends. Breathe a sigh of relief with them. If someone in your office receives flowers, imagine their scent and vividness. You can feel uplifted by a gift that was given to someone else. You don’t have to wait until someone gives you flowers to find their joy. Joy can always be found.

Buddhists say that there are 108 opportunities in every moment to wake up, to find true bliss. Probably like 324 just went by in the time it took me to write that sentence. We can train ourselves to look for these moments in all things. Fear is when we train ourselves to look in the opposite direction: for opportunities to freak out.

Usually, we imagine that we’ll be able to enjoy other people’s pleasures once we have created a safe and secure situation for ourselves–until then we have to look out for #1. But it can actually work the other way around. Attuning to the joy of others (rather than the ways they could potentially threaten us) creates the conditions for genuine, lasting fearlessness, the kind that is not dependent on your latest victory.

Click here for Part One (Lovingkindness) and here for Part Two (Compassion). Stay tuned for Part Four (Equanimity).