The Heart of Friendship: Mudita
Happy New Year!
As we enter 2025, I am aware that I am incredibly fortunate to have many dear friends who have surrounded me with love and compassion through loss and heartbreak. We all need at least one person who will stand by us, sit with us, walk beside us when life is difficult and we are falling apart. That person, those people, are considered among our closest friends.
But research tells us that there is an even more important act of friendship than expressing empathy when things go wrong and that is the expression of empathy when things are going right. True loving friendship means that when we are celebrating, our friend or friends are genuinely celebrating with us.
Have you ever experienced the opposite? You are so excited to share your good news with someone and, instead of joining in your joy and laughter, they minimize your accomplishment, remind you of a loss, or one up you to elevate themselves at your expense?
When your good news is met by jealousy or envy, it is not your fault. That other person is simply demonstrating that they have their own insecurities and limitations.
How about you? How do you react when someone shares their good news with you? Do you join them in their joy or bring them down and deflate them?
The gift of being able to celebrate when something goes well for someone else is Mudita, a Sanskrit word that means "I rejoice in your good fortune."
There is no fixed pie of good experiences. If someone has something to celebrate, it takes nothing away from us. Happiness for one can mean more happiness for us all. And we can all cultivate this trait. Psychotherapist Mary Jo Rapini provides a quick overview of steps you can take right now to increase your capacity for Mudita.
We can bring awareness to our reactions and realize that our friends don't just need us in times of struggle and pain, they also need us in times of good fortune and happy outcomes.
I look forward to 2025 being a year of new starts, new promise, new celebrations. May we all celebrate each one - together!
Namaste,
Barbara Lee VanHorssen
Experi-Mentor
barbara@momentumcentergh.org
