Being Happy for Others

 
    Back in the day, as the story goes, I was in beauty pageants. All of my friends were.  I never won of course, but it was a lot of fun and I always had a good time.  Girls just wanna have fun, ya know.  Everyone cannot win, and I grew up with a very healthy realization of that. It probably helped me in my journey on learning to be happy for others. 
    I do a pretty good job of being happy for others and keeping a balanced perspective, but every once in awhile I am hit by the achievement of someone, and I am not as happy for them as I should be.  I don't think bad thoughts about that person, but it  makes me feel the need to be more useful or something like that.
I constantly have to make lists, have goals. Not being useful is somewhat detrimental to my creativity and overall contentment.  It is amazing how much better I feel when I am genuinely happy for others. Instead of  trying to figure out what I think about someone's situation and have an opinion about it, I can just say, "Thank you Lord for their blessings."   And then I am done. I can move on. I don't need to figure out what it means for me, for them, or if I need to do anything with that information, because it does not matter. I do not always need an opinion about everything, and not everything is relative to what I accomplish.
    There is always enough.  God made sure of that.  Enough creativity, success, achievement, accolades, attention, for everyone. The achievement of any one person doesn't take away the potential or realized achievements of anyone else. There is no comparison—it has no bearing on what I do. Or what I choose not to do.