Watching Others Win
One of the trickiest, slinkiest skills to learn in this life—for me, at least—is how to be happy when other people succeed (or, trickier still, when they get the thing you wanted).
To be clear, I’m not talking about the easy stuff: Your sister has her first child! Your niece gets engaged to a great guy! Your kid comes home with a good grade on a tough test! Your best friend finishes a marathon with her best time yet! Your neighbor is declared cancer-free! Duh. These are not the times when it’s hard to be happy for other people’s good fortune.
There are times when it’s easy. When it’s instinctive. When it’s utterly uncomplicated.
I’m talking about the other times.
Ego and insecurity and human nature can have a real hard time with those1 moments. “Jealousy, jealousy,” as Olivia Rodrigo sings. (We’ll circle back to Ms. Rodrigo in just a minute.)
An author (and Substacker) I like, Austin Kleon, introduced the concept like this:
You could try to practice the opposite of jealousy, which is something like the concept of “mudita”: “Mudita is word from Sanskrit and Pali that has no counterpart in English. It means sympathetic or unselfish joy, or joy in the good fortune of others.”
Here’s a photograph that—whether it’s accurate or not to how the guy really felt about the moment—captures both the essence of mudita (most of the people in the photo) and the opposite of mudita (you’ll know it when you see it) at the same time.
In the picture above, basketball human Lebron James had just broken the all-time NBA scoring record, surpassing the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The record had seemed untouchable for nearly 40 years2. Then Lebron broke it. And, up there in that photo? That’s the reaction shot. That’s how the Lakers’ bench—including the Lakers’ other megastar and Lebron’s teammate—Anthony Davis, responded.
You gotta be deep—real deep—in your own head to be the only person in an arena full of basketball-loving fools who’s NOT ecstatic to be witnessing history3. It’s easy to dog on Anthony Davis here. His stoic, dead-eyed glare. His schoolboy-in-detention posture. His unfazed face. Just how deeply in his own head he appears to be. But the truth is: he’s just human. If it’s true that what we dislike in others is what we dislike most about ourselves (I mention this a lot in my writings, I guess, because in my experience it’s at least partially true), then it makes sense that part of what pricks at me about Anthony Davis in this photo (besides his immaculate unibrow) is the creeping knowledge that I have likely—in moments I’m not proud of—been some version of this here Anthony Davis, right down to the so-what posture and dead-eyed gaze. I probably tried to smile, since I’m an anxious pleaser. But I’ve 100% felt that way on the inside, much to my shame.
Even if the photo is somehow a gross misrepresentation of Davis (and I hope it is) it tells a story that I think resonates. There’s life in there. Maybe a lesson too. Something to think about, to reflect upon, at very least.
What gets us past this? From the mud and muck of self-absorption and self-worry and self-self-self-SELF-SELF-S!E!L!F! and into true mudita? Is it graciousness? Humility? Perspective? All of the above?
I think it’s probably all of them. But the two biggest things, at least for me, that the road to mudita has really been about are: desire and time.
Desire is probably an extension or expression of self-awareness. You first have to recognize the canker in your soul before you’d ever think to address it. I believe there are—because I have seen them—people who decide not to address it. Short-term, there’s a feeling of righteous indignation or martyrdom maybe, or just the buzz4 of feeling so acutely alive by embracing the sour stings of jealousy and envy and bitterness and angst. These people opt to marinate in the negativity until they radiate it. Sometimes this can result in a sort of Me Against The World mentality, which, again, can be effective in some settings. You see it in athletics all the time; some newly-crowned champion crowing about how nobody believed in me/us and how they’re proving the haters wrong and it’s my time now and who knows what else. With results like that, you can see why someone might opt to hold on to the feeling. It is productive, in its way, on some level, in certain more-competitive contexts.
And maybe it’s simpler for an athlete because:
there’s clearly only one first place (scarcity!)
they’re not typically friends with their rivals (or the competitive thing is mutually understood and thus not problematic), so there are fewer additional negative, dissonant, clashing personal feelings when they resent whoever won instead of them
competitiveness is not just encouraged; it’s required. And that’s fine. Competitiveness is fine and makes sense in sports and capitalism.Look how we celebrate a total jerk like Michael Jordan—punching teammates in practice, humiliating younger players—because he won (a lot). In the case of the great MJ, his legendary drive and work ethic combined with his constitutional inability to countenance anyone else winning on his watch was his x-factor.
So that’s sports.
But what about real life? In your neighborhood. With your circle of friends. With your family. With a spouse. With that one, slightly-off neighbor or coworker. With anyone, really.
That’s where it comes back to desire: you’ve gotta want to be happy for the other person. Starts there. Nothing’s gonna happen without wanting.
It doesn’t serve Draymond Green in the short-term (reputation, winning) or the long-term (legacy, case for Hall of Fame inclusion) to be happy for Giannis Antetekuompo5. So why would he bother?
But we might want to bother, for both short-term and long-term reasons.
So how does time play in?
Watching others win has been a veritable mountain to climb (Sisyphean, at times) for me, I’m ashamed to admit. I’m lucky to have friends who are really, really talented and who have won (however you want to quantify “winning”) A LOT. So I’ve gotten some significant reps. A whole lot of practice. There’s your time, right there. It wasn’t overnight. It was over years.
(For real, though: try being friends with Sarah Sample6, Ryan Tanner7, Dominic Moore8, Debra Fotheringham9, Dustin Christensen10, Branden Campbell11, Scott Wiley12, and so on and on and on.)
For an insecure person, the first response can be13 “WHY COULDN’T THAT BE ME?” And it’s understandable. We’re only human.
Karin Bergquist, singer of the underrated Ohio band Over The Rhine, taught at Song School one summer and showed us all a quote tattooed on her arm that I think about a lot. It applies directly to mudita:
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Attributed to Teddy Roosevelt, the quote captures the downside of refusing mudita. Pitting ourselves against others takes our joy, not theirs.
A few weeks ago, on the way home from my niece’s wedding in Phoenix, we cranked up a little Olivia Rodrigo in Hour 10. The lyrics to “Jealousy, Jealousy” jumped out at me:
And I see everyone getting all the things I want
And I'm happy for them, but then again, I'm not
Their win is not my loss
I know it's true
But I can't help getting caught up in it all
We can’t. We can’t help getting caught up in it all. We’re human.
The problem just multiplies when you decide to stay in the unstable WHY COULDN’T THAT BE ME response, when you put down your roots, populate the fridge, leave a toothbrush, live there. The times when I’ve been able to process that (shameful but wholly human) initial feeling and move through it and on to the next, healthier thought “WOW! I AM HAPPY FOR THEM!” have always been best. I don’t always get there, if I’m honest. But it’s always the goal. And, again, it takes time.
Gotta sit with the feeling a bit
Let yourself work through it.
(That felt like a lyric when it came out so I had not choice but to format it like one. Olivia, call me.)
In some ways, the experience of being in a gigantic (23+ people onstage at its Polyphonic Spree-unwieldiest) band like The Lower Lights has been an extremely effective workshop for those feelings. In a band that big (and talented), you have to reckon with the idea that you’re not the main event, at least most of the time. Most of the time, you’re gonna be complementary (at best and, at worst, pretty non-mission-critical as the 5th acoustic guitar onstage playing the same exact chords but, in my case, adorably less on the beat) and contribute to the whole—singing harmony, playing that un-mission-critical acoustic guitar, introducing the musicians, whatever the band needs. I would guess most members of the band—being both talented and human—have had some moment where they wonder if they’re underappreciated or underutilized or whatever.
In the end, the magic is the whole, though. As former Utah Jazz Quin Snyder once said, “The strength of our team is our team.” You’re part of a whole. The group thriving is you thriving. You’re in a big ol’ choir and you just have to trust the conductor who told you, “Don’t worry. You’re gonna have a moment.”
Same with the tribute shows I’ve helped put together over the years on the Rooftop and at The State Room and at Velour. It’s been a process of learning to be ok with doing a lot of work that goes mostly towards shining a light on others’ talents. That took some time. Early on, I got (usually secretly) grumpy with people who didn’t care as much as I did14
Maybe that’s Mudita-Plus.
After we did the Neil Young Harvest 50th Anniversary show last year, I ran into this quote and it became something of a Bathroom Mirror Sticky Note Quote for me.
Something to aspire to.
Learning to shine light on others hasn’t made me want my proverbial star to shine less. That’s still there. I still have an ego, no doubt about it. I still have my patently Middle Child hunger to be seen and need to be understood. The pleaser wants to please. I like applause as much as the next guy, man!
And it hasn’t magically filled whatever insatiable creative void I have when it comes to songwriting and my musical life. Those more personal pursuits and drives are still there. Thank goodness.
What it has done—going back to the Teddy Roosevelt quote—is stopped damming up potential joy. There is real joy, first, in recognizing the beauty and artistry and brilliance of others. In noticing. In seeing what makes someone unique and great. And the same joy of personally recognizing that is only compounded when you have a chance to shine a light on it, to push the recognition beyond the personal. I’m not gonna let my ego deprive myself of the joy of seeing the confluence of an audience primed for something great and an artist who is about to unleash their personal brand of greatness. One of my favorite smug things (and I have many) to say, at tribute shows, after a singer sings a song or a musician rips a solo, is: I TOLD YOU. Reinforcing whatever seemingly hyperbolic introduction I’d given the artist. Saying “I told you it was going to be fantastic. AND WAS IT NOT FANTASTIC?”
When I put it that way, it makes me worry that there’s a lot more ego involved than mudita.
I’m a work in progress.
Do I use italics too much? I do, don’t I? I knew it.
Medium-fun fact: I watched both record-breaking baskets—Kareem’s and Lebron’s—live on television. Kareem’s record-breaking shot—to surpass Wilt Chamberlain—was against my Utah Jazz in 1984.
Not counting the opposing team, obviously.
Not dissimilar to the drug-like, physiological surge that comes with outrage.
I did not look up how to spell Giannis’. last name. I blindly tried Antetekuompo. Looking just now, it’s Antetokounmpo.
Sarah won the Folks Fest Songwriter Contest (the same contest in which—in different years— I took sixth place and second place, not that anyone’s counting). Marketa Irglova of The Swell Season once sat in front of a stage to take in all of Sarah’s set, then mentioned Sarah during the Swell Season’s MainStage set. Sarah also has a talent for connecting with literally anyone.
Ryan won the American Songwriter magazine Lyrics contest (I never even got honorable mention, not that anyone’s counting) which got him a co-write with the great Jim Lauderdale. Ryan’s songs have featured in Laguna Beach: The Real OC, among other shows and movies. He’s written incredible songs, rattled off album after album, not to mention a whole slew of non-musical art he makes with his photography and design and basic Renaissance Man-ness.
Every time I see Dominic, he shows up with a whole new family of songs he’s just written. “Got anything new?” he’ll ask as I scour my brain for some decent song chunk worth hearing that he hasn’t already heard me play six months ago when we last shared songs. My brother Scott put on a playlist over Thanksgiving and one of Dominic’s songs came on in between Sylvan Esso and Teddy Thompson and fit right in. Scott and I mused on how weird it is that the guy that writes some of our favorite songs spends his days doing more important things: palliative care for kids and of course being a first-rate father.
Honestly, Debra can sing anything. Anything. Her voice sounds good on everything and, as a singer, she’s able to find her way into it and still be…Debra. She’s not putting on her best Billie Holiday or Florence + The Machine impression. She finds a way to still be Debra and blow you away. Debra’s so good she has an entire album of cover songs recorded forever ago that she just never released, not that anyone’s counting.
Dustin got signed as songwriter by Carnival Publishing (a Nashville publisher, one of only two, in fact, that I had met with in one of my first trips to Nashville), sang impressively on The Voice, has fans in people like Miranda Lambert and Adam Duritz and Bob Ezrin (oh, just the guy who produced Pink Floyd’s The Wall), writes songs with songwriting heroes like Lori McKenna, and who knows what else.
The guy who wanted it—a life in music—more than anyone I know. He was a lifer from the get-go. Every once in awhile, I’ll see where his band is playing that night via Instagram and I have to send him a text, telling him how amazing it is that he’s playing (insert legendary venue here).
I could give you a billion credentials here, point to a dozen songs I think were perfectly produced/engineered/mixed. But I’ll just say that Scott has worked on massive records (Elliott Smith, The Chicks, Bonnie Raitt) and puts just as much heart and care into decidedly non-massive records (mine). He sang Michael Stipe’s part with 10,000 Maniacs on a leg of one of their tours. And he plays guitar like nobody else.
is
A huge part of my artistic progression has been the realization that NOBODY is going to care about your project as much as you do. It’s not fair to expect them to, either. That’s why it’s YOUR project. So just be grateful that they’re there, show them that gratitude, and try to coax their best out. And, when it’s NOT your project, try to be as engaged as you can because karma.
👏👏👏!