Great article on Medium last week on “Why Can’t We Just Be Happy for Each Other?” Highly recommended.
It’s funny. I am mostly always happy for people when they get married, find out they’re expecting, traveling and other assorted life events they’ve wanted. Or they have everything compared to my nothing. That’s always fun. Of course, it depends on the person/people — a very short list of my friends really DO deserve it all and I really do root for them to have it.
However, I might get pretty bitter when they have work success. Like, I’m usually a decade older and working my pudgy little tail off and probably making less money. They’re out exercising and getting fit and I’m not even near starting my long commute home. They are out with friends and meeting new people (including people to date) and my tired ass is home with Mom. Again.
Don’t get me wrong — I do covet those life events. God knows my life has been little more than a series of disappointments, many of which were caused by me pretending not to care when MAYBE I DID. But work victories that aren’t mine are more-challenging to celebrate.
I guess as I’m here pushing 40 (Jesus.), I always thought I’d be a hotshot editor in Manhattan. Trust me, I’m happier being in Florida and I have a great title and I live in a great condo with a killer view in a chi-chi ZIP Code. People WOULD KILL to be me.
I guess I just read Julie Baumgold’s article in “Vogue” titled “Life’s a Beach,” about her and her husband’s self-exile from New York’s publishing elite to a waterfront condo in Amelia Island and I feel like I deserved that fabulous life or line on my resume. Or that I deserved a better economy so that I didn’t have to settle for so many less-than-ideal jobs that changed my path.
Of course, we end up where we need to be. And we might as well be happy for ourselves so that we can be happy for others. Or, at least, genuinely happy … and maybe that will unlock our own true joy that’s even better what we’d expected we’d already have by now.