The pain of one should not become the joy for another.  This is what exactly happened when a CEO of a respectable industrial group lost his job.  While most of us may not be aware of  why the CEO was sacked and whether it was a fair step or not, we took the liberty of commenting on it and also shared jokes on the social media.  I was a bit hurt and thought I should reflect on it.

All of us go through ups and downs in life.  Should the sorrow of one individual give joy to another.  I do not believe so.  Lets examine it from a sports perspective.  If we play a game and lose the match, we do not end up attacking our opponents.  On the other hand, we shake hands and congratulate our opponents for winning the game.  That is true sportman's spirit and that is the way all the games are played in the world.

Why should life be different ?  Today someone may lose his job.  Tomorrow, it could be us.  Why should we laugh at someone losing his job and share jokes on the social media.  What joy can it give us ?  If someone is in pain, we may need to empathise.  We cannot be happy and making fun of it.  We have to remember that it could happen to us and we may not be amused if someone laughs when we lose our job.

We may need to reflect on our day to day behaviour.  Do we rejoice at the pain of others ?  We could share jokes and have fun if someone shares a good news with us.  A  promotion at work or a medal in a game is worth sharing joy.  But, if someone is in a crisis, we need to put ourselves in their position.  We need to reflect and pray for them to get out of their crisis.  It does not matter whether it is because of them or inspite of them.  The fact that they are going through a pain must make us empathise with them rather than rejoicing.

We can look back at life.  We may have topped our class in school or college but do we ever rejoice at our classmates, who failed.  We don't and we should not.  It is quite possible that while we have topped in school, we may end up failing in a subject in college and our ill behaviour may haunt us when others laugh at us at our failure.  It is in moments of crisis, we need to be humane.

In the photo above on the border of south and north Korea, the people of both countries hope to unite some day again. The separation of the two countries could have meant sorrow for some and joy for others.

The situation is no different at the workplace.  While we may succeed in a project and a colleague may fail, we cannot afford to rejoice at the failure of our colleagues.  Our success today is because of the contribution of many of our team members.  Tomorrow if we laugh at the failure of others, the same team members may lose their trust in us and may not be happy to support us to succeed.

The joy of others can be a source of happiness for us.  We can celebrate joy and share pain.  This is the way life will teach us to balance the good and the bad and share our joy and pain in life.

Let us celebrate joy and share pain with others.

S Ramesh Shankar