Sharing Happiness

Love. I may not blog about it all that often at the moment, but it's never far from my mind. For those who don't already know, I'm a hopeless romantic. I'm dying to be swept off my feet by some amazing man. Sometimes I want it so badly it hurts.

But at the same time, I've been learning that, much to my surprise, I don't have be in love to find joy in romance. Does that sound weird? Okay, let me 'splain.

Once upon a time, before I'd ever been really loved, I used to find myself suffering from bitterness, loneliness, and self-pity whenever one of my friends was blissfully happy and in love. It was painful to watch them enjoy something I wanted so badly. Then I fell in love. Suddenly, I was the blissful, happy, smiley one. But I still hurt, because I saw other people who were in pain because my happiness reminded them of what they didn't have. I felt utterly powerless, because, short of giving up what made me most happy and making myself miserable too, I could do nothing to ease their pain. I hated it.

Elder Jeffery R. Holland said: "Envy is a mistake that just keeps on giving. Obviously we suffer a little when some misfortune befalls us, but envy requires us to suffer all good fortune that befalls everyone we know! What a bright prospect that is---downing another quart of pickle juice every time anyone around you has a happy moment!" 

Admittedly, I was often guilty of this. As are we all.

So I made a choice. I would flip Elder Holland's statement on its head and allow others' good fortune to bring me joy as well.

I vowed that I would never again allow someone's happiness to bring me pain. Even if I did hurt, I would never let someone who was happily in love (or successful in something I wished I could succeed in) know that I was hurting. Instead, I would go out of my way to be happy for them. Regardless of what I myself lacked.

The funny thing about going out of your way to do something is that, inevitably, you find yourself on your way again. What took conscious effort soon became natural. I stopped having to tell myself to be happy for someone else's success, and soon found that I really was happy for them.

I love seeing my friends fall in love. I love seeing them get a much-needed or much-hoped-for job, even though I'm getting back on the job market, too.

I'm not always perfect at it, obviously, and my loneliness/fear/discouragement/whatever often gets the better of me, but frankly, I've found that it's much more pleasant to allow others to share their happiness with you than it is for you to share your misery with them. If I don't have something to be joyful about, then I'm going to find someone who does and let them tell me all about it.

So, over the last few weeks (yes, some of this is fairly new to me---I bet you all are much smarter about this than I am) I've been learning that we are often miserable or sad only because we choose to be. That probably seems like a "duh" thing to you. Frankly, it is to me, too. But I know that when I am happy, I want to share it with everyone else in the hopes that they can be happy with me. I don't do it to rub it in their faces or to hurt them. I simply want to share the joy that I feel with others. This is why we share the gospel. It's why we announce marriages and babies. It's why we celebrate birthdays, promotions, graduations, or anniversaries. Because we want to share happiness. (This philosophy does exclude arrogant snobs who do want to rub their success in other people's faces, but they have more issues than just snobbery anyway.)

The Lord gave everything for us to have a chance to experience true happiness with Him. What's made you happy today?