Go Ahead, Be Happy For Others; It’s Free, It Makes You Feel Good

Here in Northern Florida, spring invents itself and begins pushing up the Eastern Seaboard. Some regions are mired in snow but the dogwoods and azaleas here were perfectly synchronized in blooming. Some of us almost missed that.

“I was taking a walk over the weekend and I found myself with my head down, thinking over some problems,” said a friend who lives far out a woodsy road. “I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ Nature really is so astonishing, and I wasn’t even looking at it.”

She jarred my thoughts toward some borrowed wisdom, The Three Needs of Life. I’d come across it in my grandfather’s tin-covered trunk, which brims with prose, phrases and jotted-down revelations such as The Three Needs:

Companionship and touch.

To give care as well as get it.

Spontaneity and surprise in each day.

Nature rarely fails to provide No. 3. Most surprises have their moment and then fade, but the great outdoors is a recurring astonishment.

William Maxwell, fiction editor of The New Yorker for 40 years and now nearly 90, recently wrote about things he finds endlessly pleasurable to see: erect carriage in an old person; the faces of small children; the countryside where “every now and then … I stand and look hard at everything.”

Looking hard at faces is almost as good as looking hard at nature. Facial reactions are so spontaneous (unless one is a very practiced actor) and endlessly instructive.

A few weeks ago I noticed a woman’s jaw clench when a mutual friend shared some small honor she had received. In right-sounding words, the woman expressed happiness for her friend, yet her tightened jaw spoke of something else. Not unhappiness, exactly. But maybe a pinch of envy.

That was my surprise for the day because I’d been growing fond of this idea that as you get older it’s easier to be happy for others.

So convinced of this was I that I’d planned to relay it to an interesting young woman who had made me laugh, then wince, then sigh when she said, “I wish you’d tell me what it’s like to get older.”

Notwithstanding the occasional tightened jaw, Lisa, it is easier to be happy for others as you get older. By the time we have raced through a few decades, we’ve all been leveled by something. We know good times are to be savored. Anybody’s.

Unless we’ve led a charmed life, we’ve had our hearts broken, lost people, jobs, health, homes or aspirations. About the only thing we haven’t lost is weight - and empathy, both of which we gain.

Empathy confirms that life plays out in phases - peaks and valleys, long slow climbs and unexpected tumbles. Empathy allows us to see that when others are enjoying a spell of happiness or success, they aren’t diminishing the whole supply, or our share.

I like the way my husband, who is a great reader, a fine writer and a bit of a curmudgeon, sizes up the good fortune of others. In the literary world, for example, you find people envious of others’ successes. John greets such news as a merciful break for the reading public. “There aren’t enough good things to read,” he mutters. “We need all we can get.”

So when you catch someone else enjoying a great phase, loosen your jaw. It’s easy. It feels good. It costs nothing. It will restore your faith in life’s longing for symphony after cacophony, smoothness after rocky roads.