Amy Lu's View

I was complaining. 

It was a lovely night, in almost every way. My good friend Sandy and I were taking in the Winter Lights display at the Arboretum on an early December evening. It was a little chilly (as was to be expected) but nothing extreme–even my wimpy Winter averse self could handle the temperature. We were surrounded by beautiful lights and wrapped in a festive atmosphere–and I was complaining. 

I wasn’t complaining about our evening, but about how I was annoyed by someone’s behavior earlier in the week. So while I wasn’t actually being a Grinch, I was so engrossed in my story of a past moral outrage that I wasn’t fully appreciating the awesomeness of the moment I was actually in. 

And then we encountered another Arboretum visitor who was having a glorious time. He was sitting on a bench with his companion, happily taking it all in. “Isn’t this just great?” he beamed. 

It took a moment, but his joy got my attention and penetrated my grumbling. “Wow,” I thought, this guy is happy. Really happy.”

I’m not proud to admit this but part of me wondered what was up with this guy. Wasn’t he overreacting a bit? Yeah, the light display was cool, but it wasn’t that amazing. Why was he so happy? Have I ever been that happy?

Could I be that happy? 

I didn’t become as happy as the lights display fan guy that night, but I did become more appreciative of my surroundings and the experience. I appreciated his joy, and I became curious about if I could find more joy in small things. 

Last year I learned about the term “freudenfreude”–defined as the opposite of “schadenfreude” to describe taking pleasure in the success of others. This is definitely a feeling I want to cultivate, but not necessarily easy when another’s success seems to highlight our failure.

But the guy at the Arboretum is inspiring me to think about also taking pleasure not only in others’ success, but also simply their joy and happiness. Can the joy of another spark my own joy, even if I don’t find whatever excites them all that exciting myself?

Finding joy in others’ joy–Joyenfreude? Maybe I won’t attain their level of delight, but maybe I can stop, pay attention, get over myself, and appreciate those things that I do get into more fully, or even see how something I didn’t think was cool actually is?

A phrase that I’ve also recently learned is “Don’t yuck my yum”–don’t be a hater, don’t disparage what makes someone else happy. Good advice. Maybe sometimes I can even yum to another’s experience of yumminess?

“Love Who Holds Us All, on some days this earthly existence is hard. Thank you for our capacity to be comforted, dazzled, and delighted by harmless pleasures and small joys. Help us keep faith with the eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not yuck someone else’s yum.”

–“Prayer” by Rev. Erika Hewitt*

I don’t expect to undergo a complete change of heart…sometimes I’m still going to complain about other people and bask in my moral superiority and not fully appreciate the awesomeness of a moment. Sometimes, I’m going to still internally roll my eyes at someone’s love of something that I think is boring or silly. Okay, I’ll probably do these a lot–there is a joy to being a bit of an asshole–but hopefully less frequently than I used to.

*I was so inspired by this I quoted it in our Christmas card