I woke up to this article, and it metaphorically spun my head around. What I took from it (whether it actually said this or not) is that strong relationships are as much, if not more, about celebrating the joy of the other person when s/he is experiencing it than about cheering one up when s/he is down.
Why is this pertinent to me at this point of my life? Well, last night, when I asked a friend about the outcome of the Brazil-Croatia soccer/football match, she seemed to become really excited. I think she felt tremendous joy that Brazil had won and expressed even more love for the man named Neymar. What did I do? I quickly attacked her for loving the young guy and made that a point of contention. She started to defend him and say why she thought he was great — that she had followed him for a long time, his talent, etc. Then she quoted a Brazilian song to emphasize one of her points. But she misquoted the lyrics and I jumped on that, to demonstrate how much I knew about that song and moreover, Brazilian culture, and really, just to puff my chest out and say that I knew more than she did and I did not want to be challenged. She looked deflated and pissed. I felt victorious, but in an unpleasant way.
What all started as a joyful occasion with an opportunity to bond quickly spiraled into a treacherous battle of pride, leaving two people bloodied and insipid. And why?
I have noticed in my life that often my desire to be right will trump my desire to be happy. And this comes at a cost, one that I can’t put my hands around. So I ask myself, what is the unnecessary emotional stress we cause ourselves simply through the actions we take to be right? Or from the glass-half-full side of things, how many opportunities could we have to bond if we met people where they were emotionally?
Emotional states are fragile things, bouncing from joy to confusion, falling to anger, sinking to nausea, springing back to joy, skipping around the corner to exhaustion, prancing up the street to delight, and then ending who knows where. So when we have the opportunity to elongate joy, to absorb it in our bones, please, let us, instead of squashing it with ego.