How to Kindle Joy Within Us
What does your conscience tell you? According to the nineteenth-century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, somebody can always single out the voice of our conscience above the noise. Because it wants something seemingly useless, senseless, or even incomprehensible but at the same time actually beautiful and good.
Tolstoy believed that one should accept themselves not as a master but as a servant, and then our bad feelings, anxiety, and dissatisfaction will be turned into calmness and peace. By doing so, “You will be filled inside with a clear vision of your purpose, and with a great joy.”
Similarly, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote,
As our self-interest diminishes, our anxieties disappear, and then comes quiet and firm joy, which always diffuses us with a good spiritual disposition and a clear conscience. Every good deed helps to kindle a feeling of joy within us. The egoist feels lonely, surrounded by threatening and alien events; all his desires are sunk in his own concerns.
What if compassion and goodwill are the answer to every question? The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius put it like this in his personal journal,
Life is short. Do not forget about the most important things in life: living for other people and doing good for them.
Marcus also wrote that a happy life is one in which we do — “one good deed after another, with no interval between them.” It is not often the advice you hear or what you think of when you’re experiencing anxiety and dissatisfaction.
That is one of the strange things about wisdom (or timeless ideas in general) is that they are not exactly common sense. Until we hear it, that is, then it makes complete sense. Stranger still, Tolstoy advised that we do good only when we do not notice what we do, but when we forget ourselves and live only in others.
But do not take my word for it (or Tolstoy’s, or Schopenhauer’s, or Marcus Aurelius’s). Go and experience it for yourself. Suppose good deeds are not the most important things in life. Then, what is most important?
“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself,” at least that is how Ralph Waldo Emerson put it. Kindling joy in others, in turn, kindles joy within us.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
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