Rejoicing in reality with fairness
18 Apr 2019
Rejoice
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca - Roman philosopher
Joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. Rejoice is a verb which means to feel or show the feeling of great pleasure and happiness. We have often heard of joy. The lack of joy is a state or feeling of great physical or mental distress or discomfort. Therefore, if we are in distress or discomfort, it simply means that we have no joy. Whatever the circumstances, if we had joy in ourselves, we wouldn’t feel the discomfort. Joy is a feeling, but in order to have this feeling in ourselves, we need to feel this feeling. In other words, whoever rejoices have this feeling of great pleasure and happiness, others simply don’t have them.
What can we rejoice in?
The world has a lot of choices to rejoice in. For some, consuming alcohol frees them of worries and gives them a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. That is, they rejoice in drinking. Others rejoice in meeting with friends, travelling, exercising, going for a swim, doing charity, etc.
The truth is that everyone in this world tries to rejoice in something or the other that would make them feel good. I’m not sure if we can think of anyone who wouldn’t want to rejoice. Even the depressed or the people with negative emotions rejoice in their misery, though sadly, that is making them worse. That is why they wouldn’t choose to come out of the misery easily, even if they had a choice.
We all need to rejoice in something. What is the right way to rejoice? What is the right thing to rejoice in? There is not one thing that fits all solution. You are free to choose your own thing to rejoice in. In whatever you rejoice in, the only ground rule must be to make sure you rejoice not in injustice. Rejoice in the quality of being true to yourself and to others. Do not rejoice in anything that lacks fairness.
Everyone should be happy. Everyone should have the joy to make our lives meaningful. We have to rejoice in something that is right. We have to rejoice in something that builds us. There is no single formula to figure out the right thing to rejoice in. The best we could do is to try and rejoice in things that are fair.
So, what does it mean to rejoice not in injustice but in truth or reality?
In every situation, there is always a reality or a state of being true in accordance with the facts. There is also injustice which overlooks the reality to act with unfairness. Let us take for an example of a statement that is often seen or heard on social media, “I don’t care what other people think of me, I just like to be myself”. This statement sometimes infers to motivating ourselves not to give up in life. It also is sometimes rude and unfair. When the statement becomes rude and unfair, the one who made this statement is only trying to rejoice in being unfair in that situation by finding pleasure in being rude to others.
Consumption of alcohol is not good for health and society. When someone with mental stress consumes alcohol, it’s going to make their situation even worse. However, consider a person who is not a regular alcoholic but wants to drink his distress off for a day or two. He is trying to rejoice in alcohol to forget his inflictions without any motive to continue in it but only as a temporary relief. This would be reasonable and fair in reality if he doesn’t actually get into a habit of drinking or causes inconvenience to others.
When you feel low, wouldn’t it be best to travel to a far off place and rejoice in it? It sounds perfectly normal for someone to rejoice in travelling. However, in reality, if he wants to rejoice in travelling alone, leaving behind a family or friends who need his company isn’t fair.
There may be many other examples in our daily lives. Justice and reality are not unchanging but depends on the situation, persons involved and many other factors. What is justice to me, maybe an injustice to you. However, as humans, we all have some level of fair judgement. Let us learn to follow our instinct to always rejoice in reality with fairness.