Weddings are in season. A couple of weeks ago, I attended the wedding of a mature couple who found each other after years apart. Rumi has said that ” Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.” Their wedding was a joyous event, a celebration of ageless love, family, friendship and the power of Spirit. Joy emerged in the sanctuary where the two were married. It sustains its powerful strength as it traveled to the reception. Vibrant energy caused guests to dance and rock like whirling dervishes, twirling into a spiritual and loving trance. Smiles were plentiful and laughter bounced off the walls of the exquisite ballroom like inflated balloons in a large box. Love saturated the air and made everyone apparently forget the transitory nature of sadness. Empathetic joy was lavishly on display in the opening dance of the couple; flushes and rushes of well-being permeated the celebratory air. Everyone derived benefit from the joy of the couple who were married, and thus found ways to discover joy within themselves.
Empathetic joy is life affirming and spiritually nurturing. But we don’t have to wait to experience it at weddings or other celebratory events of people we love. We can rejoice when a co-worker gets a promotion even if we don’t get one; or when a couple gives birth to a child even when we are childless. We can get happy when a friend’s daughter graduates from college, even when our own child struggles in school; or when a person we barely know achieves a milestone he wanted to achieve, even if our own achievement seems elusive.
A bit harder is to celebrate the joy of someone with whom you have a “sandpaper’ relationship. Now, that requires that we realize that another person’s joy is really our joy anyway, since we share the same spiritual universe. What we feel about others reflects how we feel about ourselves. We have an opportunity to expand the joyful possibilities for ourselves by consistently practicing empathetic joy. Victor Borge said that ” laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” Empathetic joy is the shortest distance between peace and well-being. Love others with empathetic joy and wake up to the true treasure of life.

We have an opportunity to transcend competitive games in our relationships if we speak the truth of our experience.- Ndidi

We are more than what we have experienced in life; we are eternal spirits.

Allow yourself to love what is, and not what is not. – Ndidi

Allow yourself to stumble and you will see how far above the ground you can rise! – Ndidi

If you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all your life spend your days on the ends of strings someone else pulls. – H. Thurman

Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the world. – Rumi

When the soul has stripped away all comprehensible things, it is left with God, the incomprehensible. – St. Alonso

In God I live and breathe and have my being. – Acts 17:28

Lose yourself in the eternity of the present moment and finally find what you are seeking. – Ndidi