day no. 15,548: joy and sorrow shared

While reading The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man by Brett McKay, I came across a great quote...

"Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow." -- Swedish proverb

Joy insists on being shared. Joy increases when it is offered to others. It is not a product of scarcity. It is the opposite. It is only scarce when it is horded. It grows when it is given away. Joy abounds in liberality. There is nothing stingy about it. Having someone to share the thing you love with only increases your love for the thing.

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.” ― C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

As much as joy increases in having someone to share it with, sorrow decreases for the same reason. Having someone to help shoulder the burden of sorrow alleviates the weight of it. Sorrows can be shouldered by two that could not have been born by one. Just as joy desires to be shared in order to grow, sorrow desires to have assistance in order that it may evaporate. 

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.