Chapter 40: Catch Happiness
Cooking class (one week before my diagnosis, with no idea of what was to come). Chiang Mai, Thailand
Chemotherapy and radiation have started in full force this week! My horrible “spa” experience was even worse than expected on my first real radiation session because not only did I continue to experience extreme claustrophobia, I also experienced an olfactory aura – basically an imaginary smell that is not really there. Our brains are crazy!
Every time I get radiation, I smell an intense chlorine smell. Some people do not experience this at all, while others smell something entirely different. It all depends on what part of your brain is being irradiated. Stuck in my tiny, claustrophobic plastic mask prison, this chlorine smell added a sensation that I was also drowning in an overly-chlorinated pool. Fun times!
Fortunately, after my first experience with this smell sensation, I was more mentally prepared for my second session this morning. I meditated while in my radiation treatment and imaged I had just wiped down my meditation area with Clorox wipes (as one does in COVID times). Wow, this visual imagery helped a lot. Instead of drowning in an awful spa pool, I was now meditating in a clean, fresh and sterile area.
Meditation is incredible, people. A common Buddhist teaching is that of taming the mind. Doesn’t that sound nice? Easier said than done, true, but I will admit that this actually does work.
With practice, studying (you’ve all seen the insane number of Buddhist books I quote, and I’ve read about 4x that number in the last month alone), meditation, and acceptance of your own unique situation, I’ve been able to slowly uncover a small ability to tame my mind – instead of feeling like I’m drowning during radiation, I can now tame my mind to smell imaginary chlorine and just feel very, very clean. To again reference one of my favorite quotes, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, “With our mind we create our own world.”
I hope you are all having a less smelly day than I am. Today, I thought I would share some thoughts on one of my favorite strategies to “tame the mind.” This strategy is called mudita, or sympathetic joy. It is one of the four Buddhist brahma-viharas, (Buddhist virtues). Even if you are not in any way a Buddhist or interested in Buddhism, I still feel like this concept can be a helpful one to think about.
Mudita is, in essence, the exact opposite of schadenfreude (pleasure derived from someone else’s misfortune, and also the title of my favorite song from the delightfully inappropriate musical Avenue Q). Schadenfreude is the “happiness” we feel when we see others suffer. It sounds horrible, but we all do it. Oh, you failed that test? I’m so sorry... (secretly beaming internally because you know you aced it).
Mudita, on the other hand, is pleasure derived from someone else’s wellbeing. Much more beautiful, don't you think? Probably the easiest way to describe mudita is to think of a parent’s happiness when they see their child succeed.
I am no master of mudita by any means, but I absolutely LOVE the idea of it.
I became interested in the idea of mudita, or sympathetic joy, recently. After my cancer diagnosis, I found myself looking around at other people my age who are healthy, spending their afternoons at happy hour instead of radiation (pre-COVID), getting married, having children, and I would feel both sorry for myself and irrationally irritated at “how good” everyone else seemed to have it. Whatever “it” actually is.
Sharon Salzberg describes this feeling more eloquently in her book Lovingkindness. She states, “We may look at someone else’s achievements or someone else’s happiness and find ourselves wishing that their status or condition might be diminished – as if thereby our own would be increased. This attitude of diminishing the happiness of others is based on considering happiness as a limited resource or commodity- the more someone else has, the less there is for me.”
Happiness, a limited resource? How silly is this!? But, we all think it, don’t we?
The inner scientific nerd in me wanted to research this idea. I came across an interesting research study from the BMJ that actually found the exact opposite is true about happiness. This article is the “Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network” by Fowler et al from 2008 (https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2338.) The objective of this study was to observe if happiness can spread from person to person and whether happiness can spread through social networks or not. Fascinating, right?
The results of this study essentially found that happiness spreads like a virus. To quote the article, results showed that “the relationship between people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friend of one’s friends’ friends). People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinal statistical models suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals.”
Happiness is not a limited resource in any way; in fact, happiness is contagious!
Contagion seems to be a valid fear for us all right about now in the midst of COVID-19. What if, instead of a virus, we can spread happiness around the world by practicing mudita, or sympathetic joy? By finding pleasure in the happiness of others, we can create happiness for ourselves. I call this being selfishly selfless.
Even from a socially acceptable distance with a mask on, once we start spreading happiness, it will quickly spread far and wide (this is not only a Buddhist concept, but a scientific evidence-based concept as well, outlined in the BMJ article referenced above).
What does this whole rant have to do with my cancer, you may be wondering? Well, honestly, not very much.
Really, I’m just being selfishly selfless by spreading my happiness to you in hopes you will catch it from me and pass it along to someone else. Let’s catch happiness, not COVID.
Fondly,
Courtney
© CB2020