Mudita and the Practice of Shared Joy
January feels like the right time to practice Mudita.
Mudita is a sanskrit word that means "I rejoice in your good fortune." It's on my license plate - though I probably shouldn't tell you that since I am sometimes not the best driver. I call myself Queen of the Curb. Anyway, the practice of Mudita is about taking genuine joy in the happiness and good fortune of others. Not making comparisons. Not offering polite applause. But experiencing real, grounded gladness that someone else is thriving — even when their joy has nothing to do with us.
It sounds lovely, doesn't it? But it really isn't an easy practice in a culture built on scarcity, competition, and quiet score‑keeping. Which is why, every Holiday Season, I find myself returning to Vienna Teng’s An Atheist Christmas Carol. It is a song about wonder without dogma, generosity without transaction, and hope that is not earned or withheld. It is a song that stays with me long after the holidays are packed away — the reminder that joy does not need to be justified, and that hope and celebration come from connection that embraces our humanity.
Mudita lives in that same space. It asks us to loosen our grip on resentment, sadness, and envy and to notice where joy is already happening — in our neighbors, our communities, even in people whose paths look nothing like our own. Mudita to me is a practice we must embrace if we are to flourish as human beings.
Harvard and the John Templeton Institute are serious about understanding human flourishing. They have launched a 20 year study and I am fascinated by the premise. Laurie Santos is featured in a short video from The Well that focuses on happiness and human flourishing. What strikes me is how consistently people who study joy don't describe it as an individual achievement as much as something relational—something that grows in the presence of others.
It seems that stories of happiness and joy are never about perfect lives or the absence of hardship. They are about belonging, shared meaning, and the way well‑being deepens when joy is allowed to circulate and to be shared rather than be hoarded.
As I write this, I am preparing for my sabbatical and my journey to the Philippines. I chose the Philippines because they ranked third in the Human Flourishing Project's initial results. I am fascinated because this finding runs counter to many of our assumptions about wealth, comfort, and success. I am traveling to see why they ranked so high as a place where people flourish and to see what I may be able to bring back with me to the Momentum Center and to my own way of being.
Leaving with the posture of a student, I hope to come to understand how community, meaning, faith, family, and mutual care are practiced in everyday life in a culture I know so little about. And I suspect I will learn something about how joy can be shared rather than competed for.
At the Momentum Center, we cultivate Mudita and see glimpses of it every day. When someone celebrates another person’s good news even though they are still waiting for their own. When a conversation turns into shared laughter. When a volunteer shows up not to fix, but to be present. These moments matter. They are quiet acts of resistance against isolation and despair.
My hope is that this time away will help me gain a deeper understanding of how shared joy sustains resiliency — especially in communities that know hardship intimately. Flourishing, I suspect, is less about the absence of struggle and more about the presence of connection.
As we enter this new year, my invitation to you is simple: notice where joy is happening around you, and practice letting it be enough. Let someone else’s good news lift you. Let celebration be communal. Let Mudita be something we practice together.
That, to me, feels like a very good way to begin a New Year.
Namaste,
Barbara Lee
Experi-Mentor
Barbara@MomentumCenterGH.org
