Is it OK to be happy when the world is falling apart?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/31/happy-sympathy-world-pain

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It is reasonable and moral to think that when others are harmed, you should feel the injury, but our sympathy should not be limited to pain

A friend of mine called the other day with news of two major life achievements: his first book had been published, and his university had granted him tenure. And yet, he said, he was miserable. How could he be happy about his success when so many terrible things were happening in the world?

It’s a good question, and one that I hear from a lot of people these days. As I write these words, humanitarian disasters are unfolding in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Global climate action has not moved fast enough, and we are perilously close to creating an uninhabitable planet. Meanwhile here in the United States, immigrants have been rounded up and shipped to foreign countries without legal protection. Trans people have been demonized. Meaningful government agencies have been cut. Research destroyed. Universities attacked. The legal system pushed to the brink and corruption rampant.

Is it cruel to be happy when there is so much destruction? Or is it simply foolish to tie one’s mental health to this unpredictable and often violent world? I told my friend that both questions hold some truth: if he is going to feel the world’s pain, he should remember to feel its joys as well. In saying this, I was relying on some of the oldest beliefs in the world – ones that we’d do well to remember today.

The idea that we should feel the pain of others is deeply etched into many cultural and religious beliefs. A foundational image for this is an understanding of humanity as members of a single body. We can find versions of the concept in the religious texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

There is, for example, St Paul in one of his letters to the Corinthians: “For just as the body is one and has many members … so it is with Christ … If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.” Centuries later, Ralph Waldo Emerson offered a secular formula: “It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members.”

Those today who doubt their own right to happiness are echoing this noble tradition of thought. It is reasonable and moral to think that when others are being injured, you, too, should feel that injury.

But feeling what others feel does not limit you to their pain. The St Paul quote above continues: “If one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” There is some logical truth in this: if we experience the injuries done to others, shouldn’t we experience their joys as well?

Some Buddhist texts suggest that this is part of the process of enlightenment. Buddha recommends spreading one’s consciousness across the whole universe and experiencing all the joys of others encountered on the way. This feeling is called mudita, often translated as sympathetic joy. A German term – freudenfreude, pleasure in another person’s pleasure – nicely captures this idea.

When we doubt whether we should feel good right now, we are only feeling the pain of others. We focus so much on what’s going wrong in the world that we neglect to also experience the goodness – the new feats, delights, births, achievements, decencies, kindnesses – all around us. While focusing excessively on the positives makes us saccharine, ignoring them completely makes us cynical.

Recognizing the need to experience both the pain and joy of others helps us move past the traps of feeling bad for feeling good or feeling good only by ignoring the world. It helps us overcome the common pitfalls of retreating into the empty sloganeering of positive thinking or the equally unhelpful downward spiral of doomscrolling depression. We can instead appreciate the very real nature of our feelings: miserable and elated, horrified and happy.

As connected members of an unfurling and complex world, we are bound to experience this range of moods. The trick is to learn to let ourselves experience them all and not get fixated on any particular feeling. The times we live in are full of horror and delight. So are our souls. It’s okay to feel both.

To say this is not to cave into normalization and acceptance of our current political situation. There is much more chaos and cruelty than there ever should be. And that’s part of the point: the current administration wants to “own the libs” and create pain and confusion. Political action is the main venue to fight back. But taking care of ourselves also matters. Feeling bad some of the time about the state of the world is part of being a connected human. Feeling good some of the time is part of our resistance.

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What’s giving me hope now

Two things: history and surprising alliances. History gives me hope because we’ve managed to overcome so many terrible things before. I look back and see so much unnecessary death and destruction, but I also see that humans bonded together and formed ways of living that were kinder and more caring. It teaches me that we are at least capable of overcoming the horrors of the present.

That’s also why alliances matter. History shows that movements win when groups of people work across their differences to form new blocs of power. When I go a protest these days and see anarchists, suburban mothers, and veterans for peace standing side by side, I know we have a chance.

Avram Alpert is a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program. His most recent book is The Good-Enough Life