Quoting Matt Freeman on love

Quoting Matt Freeman on The Bayesian Conspiracy podcast (lightly edited for readability):

The feeling of loving other people is one of the best things in the world. And it’s kind of funny because, when you’re a kid and when you’re growing up, maybe there’s this feeling of, like, I want to be esteemed in other people’s eyes. I want to be loved by other people. You think you want that. You think you want to be loved. And what I realized is, no, being loved doesn’t really feel like anything. It feels like, oh, that’s nice. Loving others is what feels amazing. Partially just for its own sake, but partially because it enables what you just described where now I can feel joy about tons of things. I can feel like combinatorially more joy than it would be possible for me to feel even if I was just like getting shit that I wanted constantly, because I can provide other people with stuff that they want that I don’t necessarily care about at all, but watching them love it and then feel amazing vicarious joy and just, just joy for them. That that’s like – you literally multiply the amount of happiness that you can feel by loving other people.

Of course being loved is also worth a lot. It gives you feelings of safety and comfort. A place to be. But there’s only so much you can do with it.

That’s what I found very empowering about this quote. Sure, loving also increases the amount of sadness you can experience, but the core of the message is also about the active role you can take in increasing the joy the people you love experience, so you can make them happier, and then you yourself can also be happier.