It is said that ‘happiness increases if shared and sorrows reduce if shared’.

 

In this context I remember some stories from our school days text books about how people avoided meeting LIC agents and the old people who had a tendency of talking about their multiple ailments.

 

Times have changed now. Agents selling Life Insurance are not so unwanted. Death of joint families and societal support systems have ensured that earning members of the families started thinking about the well-being of their dependents in case of unfortunate event of their death. And returns from the Life Insurance policies are also not so bad.

 

But it is the second issue that continues to be relevant even today, though it may not necessarily be so in context of the old only. In any case, old are generally out of sight these days – either they are living separately or are in the old age homes. This issue is generally about sharing problems and sorrows with others believing that ‘sharing reduces them’. If it was not true when we were kids, how can it be true now?  I shall try to express myself with a story.

 

Ritu and Ramesh married after many years of courtship. It was almost a fairy tale marriage. They both were in love with each other, knew each other well for years and even the families were comfortable with each other. Indeed, even after marriage they lived happily together.  But slowly Ritu started witnessing an aspect of Ramesh which she hadn’t seen earlier. As they married and became life partners the level of sharing increased – both pleasures and sorrows and problems. Every evening after returning from work Ramesh had a litany of complaints about his boss, company and the problems that he faced there. Ritu was always sympathetic and gave him as much moral strength as she could. She was also convinced that Ramesh’s boss was a devil and the only way to their happiness was for Ramesh to get another job. Her wishes were fulfilled one day. They both were overjoyed that God had heard their wishes. Finally one day Ramesh took his new job. But within a week he realized that the new boss and the company were even worse than what he had earlier. Once again his complaints at home to Ritu started. Ritu now wondered if there was something wrong with his bosses and companies or he himself.  He was never satisfied with his job. Not only this, due to this habit of his, he had made his family life also miserable. It had started effecting her own happiness and conduct and the two started drifting apart. Not that Ramesh was wrong. He had genuine issues at his work place – in both the companies. Also, instead of going out and discussing his problems with outsiders he had taken the right decision to share his feelings with his life partner. Except that slowly his life partner started feeling that he has nothing else to speak with her other than his official problems. They both were probably right in their own way, only that Ramesh didn’t realize that even with his own wife he can’t be speaking largely about his problems. It has consequences. First, the other person starts getting bored in his company, then comes avoidance and then a feeling that he is a weak man who is incapable of handling vicissitudes of life.

 

I have seen this happening in many relationships and not only in the case of life partners. It has happened between best of friends, boss-subordinates, siblings, teacher-student etc. Only similarity in all these cases was that all these relationships were very close and very deep. In all these cases both the people cared for each other and were concerned about the feelings and sentiments of the other. Till one of them decided to share and off load all his share of problems and sorrows in life on the other person.  Beyond a point, sharing of problems and sorrows instead of alleviating them enhanced them. Here I am not even speaking about the genuineness of the problem. I’m assuming that the problems are serious enough to be discussed and shared. But in many cases I have also seen people creating mountains out of mole hills and spreading them in the life of others. In many cases it actually becomes a case of sharing of fears rather than sorrows and problems.

 

I shall now give another perspective to this story. Once Ramesh and Ritu drifted apart, Ramesh invited one of his office colleagues home for dinner. This person, let’s call him Jai, was of a jovial variety. He had the same boss, same company, same problems and similar work environment as Ramesh. But once he left that environment he wanted to forget about it. Jai realized that while speaking with Ritu he forgot everything about the professional problems. Ritu had similar thoughts. Here she was speaking with a person who had exactly same problems as Ramesh but he never brought them out. She felt very happy and comfortable in his company. In fact, in his company she also forgot her own worries, problems and concerns. They soon started meeting each other more frequently, enjoyed each other’s company and used to look forward to spending time with each other – with the natural consequences to follow. Only difference in the two situations is that one started resting on sharing of sorrows and problems and other leveraged sharing of happiness and cheer. In the first situation sharing of problems enhanced them and in the second case sharing of joy and happiness lowered the respective sorrows and problems and increased happiness.

 

Let’s now look at the opposite situation  – of sharing happiness. This was a time when we were all preparing for engineering entrance examinations. One of my friends was fortunate to get a very good rank in IIT-JEE in his first attempt. Not only he but his parents were also overjoyed. To be honest, they had a reason to be happy. Slowly, this happiness started getting shared. In all the family gatherings, meetings with friends, social interactions my friend and his parents tried hard to prove the adage correct – sharing happiness increased it. For few days it worked also. But slowly they observed that their friends and relatives started drifting away from them. Very few people actually felt happy to see them happy and shared the same happiness.

 

If I try to observe the world around me closely I see that most people, if not all, are going through some crisis or have overcome some crisis. It may be anything ranging from job loss, business loss, loss of a dear one, loss of a limb, ailments for self or family members, poverty, marital discord etc. But the people who are respected and admired are the ones who bravely accept the situation and fight with their own circumstances rather than talking about it ad-nauseam with one or all most of the time. Whether it is a soldier who has reinvented himself after losing a leg in the war, or a girl who was victim of an acid attack but has become a big time entrepreneur, we as human beings respect and love people who don’t keep sharing their sorrows instead courageously accept them and face them. In fact, today they are not even called sorrows or problems, but challenges and we love to see people fighting those challenges. Not only us, even the destiny favours such people. Haven’t we heard about people who could beat even the most difficult ailments by their sheer will power?

 

Similarly, when we share our own happiness we sometime believe that most people will be happy in our happiness. Reality is that most people are happy in their own happiness. So if we have to share and spread happiness, it can’t be ours but theirs.  Just like the story of Jai and Ritu. They didn’t share their own sorrows or happiness, instead they spread happiness for each other.

 

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that while the adage – sharing increases happiness and reduces sorrow – may be true, it comes along with many riders. One can’t be sharing all his problems and sorrows with anyone since the biggest victims of this are the people who are closest to him. They start living our problems eventually impacting these close relationships. Not only this, we can’t have any relationship that rests and prospers only on sharing problems or sorrows. This doesn’t mean that we should not share our problems with anyone. After all this is an essential ingredient in close relationships.   This only means that we should be conscious of who we are sharing, what we are sharing and for how long we are sharing. It means that sharing shouldn’t become offloading of own problems. Similarly, happiness must be shared. After all we love to celebrate most happy events in our lives with others whether it is a marriage, child birth, new job, completing of a degree or any such thing. But again, it comes with a rider about who to share happiness with, to what extent and how long.

 

To my friends and readers I wish a greater ability to face their challenges without speaking about them excessively with others and greater ability to ‘spread’ happiness and make others happy rather than wishing and believing that sharing of our own happiness will bring happiness to others.