Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.

The more we practice sympathetic joy, the more we come to realize that the happiness we share with others is inseparable from our own happiness.

Sometimes people in abusive situations think they’re responsible for the other person’s happiness or that they’re going to fix them and make them feel better. The practice of equanimity teaches that it’s not all up to you to make someone else happy.

It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.