Sympathetic Joy
M y friend Patrick’s blog has been the site of a discussion of compassion that morphed into a discussion of whether feeling happiness with others is a form of compassion and also whether you can have compassion for yourself, much more worth checking out than anything on my blog today. But I thought that just in case anyone wants to practice sympathethic joy I should present an all but completely trivial list of things that have made me happy in the last two days.
1) The Fugees’ song “Ready or Not.” It’s the Enya sampling, I think, only I like this song better than I like Enya or most hip hop, have listened to it maybe too many times today. Maybe an antidote to crying to too many Dar Williams’ songs?
2) Realizing that the answer to not being able to find women’s jeans in a comfortable cut, that is, ones that do not allow a draft in back whenever I sit down, and do not cut cruelly right under my belly, while being at the same time a size that I can slide them off without unbuttoning them, is, in fact, right under my nose, why didn’t I think of this two years ago, men’s jeans. And hauling myself to Goodwill where in the matter of the minutes that Rainer could be patient with me shopping, I was able to find and try on three pairs of jeans in the men’s section that are comfortable and require no tugging, all for under thirty dollars.
3) Watching the five-year-old son of friends so that they could meet with the realtor, preparatory to their moving here (joy!), and his playing not alongside but actually WITH Rainer, the two boys inventing their own imaginary world. This is a new sort of friendship for Rainer, one I find exciting to watch.
4) Shamelessly materialistically, I am taking joy in my boots. And my big green coat. Which I cannot tell doesn’t make me look like a homeless person wearing a bathrobe around downtown, only women I don’t know will stop me to tell me that they love my coat. Which is good because I like wearing it. It has one capacious pocket big enough for pocketbook, keys, iPhone, chapstick and a paperback, so I am not bothering with any sort of purse, and thus not only am I not tugging on jeans, I am not messing with purse straps, pushing them back up on my shoulders, dealing with the purse swinging in the way of things I want to do. A tiny thing but it counts.
6) Having stumbled by some accidental combination of product, meteorological conditions, and alignments of the stars into hair that behaves as if it were curly and not merely frizzy. I still don’t think of myself as having curly hair, because in New Mexico’s dry air, it just isn’t. It may be the most superficial of joys (well except maybe the boots and the coat) but a good hair day is not to be underestimated, and I even overcome my discomfort with pictures of myself to give you the awful computer-camera picture as evidence:
7) I’m going to Texas this weekend, Raven’s kidneys willing!
With the exception of the trip to visit friends this weekend, and the joy at the friends who are moving here, I find the things on this list a little embarrassing, except that two weeks ago NOTHING was making me happy, and being made happy by any one of these, much less all of them seems like grace. Without counting on it lasting, I have to say I like this happiness thing. I feel sort of self-contained, like there’s music inside me again, and like I have a little more resilience, and the strength to keep getting up and trying.
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When I first started thinking about S.J., I imagined it as something resounding, just as deep sorrow evokes profound compassion (i.e Darfur), so great joys must evoke S.J. (i.e. I got a new job!!! or I graduated!) But your list was more immediate and down to earth and made me realize that there is a much wider spectrum, a whole gamut of joys and sorrows that we can feel compassion for. Awesome list! It really shows how ones capacity for compassion can grow with practice, that is, by appreciating the small things my own life I might better appreciate the same things in others.
huzzah! oh happiness! Jeans that fit and a Blue Fish coat to boot! I am bouncing up and down with exuberant, sympathetic joy. Can you just feel the mudita?
p.s. Your hair looks great!
Per Keats: “More happy love! more happy, happy love!” And happy happiness! Happy!
Also I think of that Douglas Hofstadter WFF (“apple horse apple happy apple apple”) and feel further happiness. Maybe the key to mudita is goofiness? As Jenzai says, big exuberant bouncings!
If we find absolute universal love instantiated in the living beloved, what’s so wrong with finding joy and rightness incarnated in material expressions? I ask you rhetorically.
At any rate, here’s to 1) jeans that freaking FIT, 2) cool boots and groovy woman-stopping coats, and 3) purselessness. Because purses SUCK. And now I am off to listen to the Fugees.
NB, to Señor Patrick: But, good hair? is NOT a “small thing”!!! ;o)
Really? Is there anything happier than friends generous enough to be happy with you on a good hair day?
Guess what?!! My Christmas present (Keen boots) finally arrived today. Happy, happy, joy, joy! And, ironically enough, I bought not one but two purses yesterday. Purses ROCK.
So I get to see the sympathetic boots and the two purses live and in person in, oh, 28 hours, but I think the internet wants pictures, Jenny.
Pictures!
TWO purses??!
Y’all all in Texas now, ogling the two (yes TWO) purses, but:
Dontcha think we each need one of THESE?
http://thebloggess.com/?p=216
Joy! Coming from this side of the Pacific, too! The joy of the material (far too many great things acquired in PDX to fit in my tiny apartment, and the accompanying irritation at not having more space), and the ethereal (the realization that change is gonna come in many ways in the next year, for all of us), the wishful (that all my friends on both sides of the Pacific were in the same place–near me–all the time), and the immaterial (it is all gonna change anyway). But mostly the real joy of connecting with people, and the fullness that brings, for which there is always room! Thanks, Mara!
omg I just laughed so hard I thought I was going to die. And I’ll take the toilet, too, thank you. Scout has already peed all over every surface in the house, anyway, right?