Hi, my name is Andy and welcome to Radiohead Space.

So it's Tuesday, I wonder how you're feeling today.

I got an email from somebody yesterday saying how they've been experiencing lockdown.

Well there's one question in there in particular that kind of intrigued me and he said was

it okay to feel happy when there was so much difficulty in the world, so many people struggling

in the world.

Of course the truth is there are always many, many people struggling in the world, suffering

in the world.

It's just that we don't always see it, we're not always exposed to it and we're not all

experiencing it in such a sort of a similar sort of vein across so many nations in the

way we are right now.

So it raises the question as well of how we think about emotions.

Because the question suggests that we can almost choose what emotion we have.

Is it okay to feel happy or should I feel a different way?

Well it's not that we get to choose.

If we were able to choose we would simply choose the emotions that we like and have more

of those and we would shut out the ones that we don't like and have lesser them.

Of course that's not how the mind responds and it also suggests that there's only room

in our mind for sort of one emotion at one time and that we can't necessarily experience

compassion at the same time as feeling happy.

And it reminded me of a time when I lived in Russia, in Moscow.

I was still in Monk but I'd left the monastery and I was teaching in a meditation center in

...