A painfully short summary of Job, so we’re all on the same
page, is: Job is a wealthy man with a large family, and Satan tells God it’s
only because of his many blessings that he is so devout; if God took away his
gifts, Job would curse Him. God tests Job by having his crops fail, his
children die, his body afflicted with sores—the works. His wife tells him to
curse God. He does not. He does, however, question God, reporting that everyone
around him thinks he must be pretty awful for God to be punishing him so. God
even responds, and when He does, he explains that humans have too narrow a
vision of suffering. It is not a result of sinning; it is character-building.
God wins his bet, and Job gets everything back—even new kids.
Tonight it’s the narrow understanding of suffering that
catches my attention. Do we need suffering to become our best selves? It certainly
builds sympathy, but I like to think empathy can be developed through our
imagination, not just experience. For tonight’s blog, my friends, you need to
know that I am an incontrovertible happy-ass. (“Optimist works too, but you lose
the “happy, and I’m not ok with that.”)
I think we can imagine other people’s suffering and learn
from it. Not as viscerally, certainly, but I don’t think we need to suffer
everything to realize some things are terrible. I’ve never lost a limb, but I
can imagine how that might change my life. I have had heart problems, but I don’t
think I feel any more deeply for others with heart problems than for those who’ve
lost limbs.
You can feel free to argue with me on this point, but if you
wait, I’ll give you another one to argue. I want to consider the opposite conjecture
tonight. We may have too narrow an understanding of suffering, but if so, we
also suffer from an inadequate appreciation of joy.
If suffering builds character, joy defines it. The things
that give us joy are the things that make us unique. You can’t choose what gives
you joy any more than you can choose whom you love or whether or not you like brussels
sprouts (I do—they make me feel like a giant Mopsy Rabbit raiding Mr McGregor’s
garden), so we kind of identify and understand ourselves by those affinities.
When we feel joy, when we’re super giddy and delighted, we
seem to sport a sort of shield against the world’s woes. When I’m on my way to
class to teach a text I particularly love, I bounce a little and dance a little
and smile really broadly. Mostly it’s infectious, but sometimes it’s disconcerting
for folks. But that just entertains me more because I’m already in joy-mode,
so my shield is up and other people’s lack of understanding doesn’t dim me at
all. You know the geeks who get all goofy when they talk about what they love;
that’s what I’m talking about.
There is power there.
The smaller moments
of joy matter too—what the Danish call “hygge,” or cozy delight. They mean the
warm, fuzzy feeling you get wearing warm, fuzzy slippers in front of a fire while
drinking something warm and (not fuzzy) delicious. The point is clear. We use
the metaphors because the physical feelings are so deep. That is joy too, if calm
and simmering rather than bouncy and electric.
Another thing joy does for us, in addition to helping us
understand how we are unique, is it allows us to make connections with other
people. When we meet someone who likes the same things we do, we immediately feel
a bond. English majors, for instance, how many of you form an instantaneous attachment when you see someone in the wide
world reading a book you love? I know best friends who have been besties for
decades because they bonded over a particular book. If it speaks to both of
you, you must be in some way the same.
We are, all of us--in lots of ways--the same.
When we find something that gives us joy and we meet someone
else who also loves it, that’s enough to forge a connection. When we meet folks
who love something we don’t really get, we can still react to the feeling,
still sponge a little vicarious joy, and (ideally) encourage them to keep on
loving it.
Joy produces joy. It also makes us healthier. There’s lots
of research on this, some of which is summarized very briefly in the UC Berkeley
Greater Good article linked at the bottom of this piece. But the evidence is
piling up. If we don’t give enough thought to how suffering helps us, we also
don’t recognize the profound impacts of joy. Maybe that’s ok. Maybe the point
is just to feel it, not to analyze it to death. But if we understood it a
little more, maybe we would make choices that put us in joy’s path more often.
That seems like a good project.
Find what you love. Get it; do it; be it–boldly. Help others
do the same. I’m off to read a book in my fuzzy slippers.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_happiness_is_good_for_your_health
Also the cocoa picture is mine, but the picture of the young ladies, Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cottontail is, of course, from Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Peter Rabbit."
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