I'M HAPPY FOR YOU

I’ve never understood the old saying that “misery loves company,” but I know it is too often true. I guess I am more of the mindset of the Orthodox Jew who believes that if you approach your home town and see smoke from a house fire rising into the sky, it is a sin to pray that it is not your house that is burning because to do so is to pray that it IS someone else’s…

 

I like to think that I am the kind of person that, when you hurt, I will cry with you and when you have succeeded I will be the first to pat you on the back and congratulate you. I would hope that you would weep with me and rejoice with me, too. But I know that many won’t. When I am in trouble, it makes some people feel better because THEY aren’t in such a mess. They take respite in my pain. When I find happiness it makes them envious and they hope it doesn’t last because THEY ought to be happy and, in some strange twist of their psyche, is the idea that if my happiness ceases their unhappiness will be less acute.

I don’t understand it, but I know that’s how the world works. I wish it didn’t. It makes me feel rather sad. I hope it does you too. If not, may my sadness make you a bit happy.