Friend’s happy family and career remind me how good life can be

By David McElroy · March 30, 2018

It makes my heart feel full of joy when my friends are happy. Seeing happiness in a friend reminds me that life in this world can be incredibly joyful — and I need that reminder sometimes.

I just saw a man who I rarely see anymore and I got an update on his life. When I first met Josh six or eight years ago, he was a young man working as an assistant manager at a fast food restaurant. By coincidence, I had known of his father — although his father was older than I was — when I was in high school about 45 miles from here.

Nearly five years ago, Josh married a beautiful and sweet woman and I was happy about that. He worked his way up to the top of management at a very successful restaurant. He was making a nice living, but he was working too many hours. I assumed he would stay on that path.

When I saw him tonight, I found out he had finished his college degree last spring. He had been in college off and on for years, so he didn’t even tell most people he was back in school until he finished his coursework.

He and his wife timed having a baby to come just after his graduation.

On the day his daughter was born, he got a call from a major bank asking him to apply for a job. Three months later, he was a retail banker with a prestigious bank, working at an upscale branch in a nice neighborhood.

The news was all good, but what really made my heart full was to sense just how content he is. He obviously loves his wife and baby daughter. (The little girl is adorable.) He’s happy to be in a job he likes that requires far less work — and it’s a job that gives him a career path he’s happy with.

I’ve been really down this week because I’m unhappy with some of the things life has been showing me lately. It’s easy for me to allow all of my unhappy circumstances to get me down — and it’s easy to wonder whether things can get better for me.

So it makes me happy to see Josh so full of joy and contentment. It makes my heart full to see my friend happy — and it’s encouraging to remind myself that life might still have joy and happiness to send my way, too. That might sound trite, but it’s true.

I’m happy for Josh — and I’m hopeful for the rest of us. Including me.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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