Be an Oasis
The world we live in contains a great deal of suffering: starvation, illness, poverty, homelessness, persecution, bigotry, war, injustice, exploitation, and much more. In connection with this, I have heard the question arise, “There is so much suffering in the world and I have life so easy. How can it possibly be ok for me to be happy when so many others are suffering terribly?” And because there will always be suffering somewhere in the world, how could it ever be ok to be happy? I used to operate on the unconscious assumption that if I was with someone who was unhappy, I needed to be unhappy, too, in order to be sensitive and supportive . It would be wrong for me to be happy when they are not. It would just make them even more unhappy. Later I learned that this was just trying to force myself to have the “appropriate” emotions and I was never able to actually pull this off. At some point later on, it oc...
