A

any less for those who lose one they love.
“Why are you looking so solemn?” the Archbishop asked me.
“I’m reflecting,” I said, “on our time coming to a close.”
“Everything has an end.”

•           •           •

fter the Archbishop’s customary prayer, we began our discussion for
the last time.
“Archbishop, Your Holiness, what an incredible joy and privilege it
has been to join you in this conversation to prepare The Book of Joy.
Today is just for a few final questions. One we received was, ‘Why do
you think it is important to write The Book of Joy now, and what do you
hope it will do for readers around the world?’”
“You obviously hope,” the Archbishop said, speaking of himself in the
second person, as he often did, “that you could be an agent for helping
God’s children enter into their heritage so they can have greater
fulfillment and can become all that they are meant to be. And you hope
that they will realize that it will happen most of all if they are generous,
if they are compassionate, if they are caring.
“It is when without thinking about it you help someone who is less
well off, when you are kind to someone else and do those things that raise
others up, you end up being joyful.”
The day before, at the Tibetan Children’s Village, the Archbishop had
answered one of the children’s questions by saying, “If we think we want
to get joy for ourselves, we realize that it’s very shortsighted, short-lived.
Joy is the reward, really, of seeking to give joy to others. When you show
compassion, when you show caring, when you show love to others, do
things for others, in a wonderful way you have a deep joy that you can get
in no other way. You can’t buy it with money. You can be the richest
person on Earth, but if you care only about yourself, I can bet my bottom
dollar you will not be happy and joyful. But when you are caring,
compassionate, more concerned about the welfare of others than about
your own, wonderfully, wonderfully, you suddenly feel a warm glow in