Hi, my name is Andy and welcome to Radiohead Space.
So it's Tuesday, I wonder how you're feeling today.
I got an email from somebody yesterday saying how they've been experiencing lockdown.
Well there's one question in there in particular that kind of intrigued me and he said was
is it okay to feel happy when there was so much difficulty in the world, so many people
struggling in the world.
Of course the truth is there are always many, many people struggling in the world, suffering
in the world.
It's just that we don't always see it, we're not always exposed to it and we're not
all experiencing it in such a sort of a similar sort of vein across so many nations
in the way we are right now.
So it raises the question as well of how we think about emotions.
Because the question suggests that we can almost choose what emotion we have.
Is it okay to feel happy or should I feel a different way?
Well it's not that we get to choose.
If we were able to choose we would simply choose the emotions that we like and have more
of those and we would shut out the ones that we don't like and have lesser them.
Of course that's not how the mind responds and it also suggests that there's only room
in our mind for sort of one emotion at one time and that we can't necessarily experience
compassion at the same time as feeling happy.
And it reminded me of a time when I lived in Russia, in Moscow.
I was still in Monk but I'd left the monastery and I was teaching in a meditation center in
Russia.
And it was one of those days.
Oh it doesn't happen every day.
It was one of those days.
I was walking down the street and everything just felt right.
I think that's in itself worth exploring sort of how one day we can head out to work
or to see friends or whatever it might be and everything looks sort of very dark and
another day everything looks very light.
Clearly what we are experiencing on the inside impacts our experience much more very often
than what's happening on the outside.
Anyway I was heading down into in the subway and I got on the train and as I sat on the
train I looked across the carriage and I saw a lady who I can only assume was homeless.
You know her coat was matted and dirty it looked like she'd been on the floor.
She just looked like she was having a really really tough time.
Not like she'd been crying as well and as I sat there I suddenly became very acutely
aware of not only how she looked and the life I assumed that she was having to lead but
also how I felt in contrast to that so I started thinking about the feeling and again almost
as though I had a choice in that.
The emotion was just present actually the emotion of happiness.
There wasn't really much I could do about it again we don't get to choose what's in our
mind at any one point.
But as I sat there I inevitably became more sort of concerned with this lady and I think
in imagining what her life may have been like I started to maybe feel that sense of human
connection.
Again in feeling that human connection it wasn't in trying to put my own mind state into
the mind state that she was experiencing that doesn't really help us.
It doesn't help the people around us.
It's more about can we be sensitive can we feel that sense of human connection and yes
that may sometimes impact how we're feeling in that moment.
May sometimes impact how we're feeling later in the day or maybe a week later a month later
as we're reminded of that particular time.
But the mind doesn't have to go to a really dark place in order to connect with the suffering
of others.
The mind has the capacity it has the space to connect at that level of empathy compassion
whilst at the same time enjoying what might be going on in our own life right now.
So a lot of people have said that they've actually felt guilty about enjoying themselves
in recent weeks, recent months.
People have said they felt guilty about feeling happy.
I guess my hope is kind of coming out of this today is that we give ourselves the freedom
to enjoy those moments when happiness does spontaneously arise in the mind, not to second
guess it, not to try and get rid of it, but instead to allow that to be present knowing
that it's big enough to embrace the difficulties, the struggles, the suffering of others and knowing
that we can still feel that sense of human connection even if we're not going through
the same experience as someone else around us.
Whatever you're doing today, I hope you have a good day.
Thanks for listening, I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow.
