Imagine that life is a long, straight pathway. On this path, you can move one of two directions at a time. One way moves us toward joyfulness while the other leads to joylessness. Day-to-day there are so many trials that push us away from joy. However, there are ways that we know to combat those small everyday difficulties. However, we don't need to face any of these challenges alone. We have one other to help us continuously live in joyfulness.
Think about it -- most likely, the number one influence on your emotional state is, indeed, people. What others say to you, how they react to what you do, and overall how they treat you will certainly contribute to your state of joy or else lack thereof. So, if others affect you in such a significant way, consider that you are just as influential in others' lives through the way that you treat them.
Back to the path analogy: let us consider how this picture helps our understanding of the subject. As a physics major, I really like connecting things I've learned about the physical world to aspects of our personal lives. Therefore, I'm going to use the idea of momentum here. Basically, you have a mass moving at a certain speed. The more massive the object and the faster it is moving, the harder it is to stop its motion. Momentum describes exactly that -- how much force it would take to stop an object in motion.
On this path that I described, you are moving in either direction, always with a certain amount of momentum. The more true joy in your life, the faster you are moving in the joyful direction and, therefore, the more momentum you have. If someone comes along and does something kind for you, or says an encouraging word, it is as if they've nudged you and provided you with a bit more momentum in the direction of joyfulness. That's great! But, just as easily, someone can come along and bring you down, foster negativity and ultimately push you in the direction opposite of joy. Now, if you were already moving toward joy then it's possible that this push only slowed you down. However, that means that the next person that decides to be negative will have an easier time moving you toward joylessness as you've lost the momentum you spent time building up. You see, continuous force in one direction will quickly slow you to a stop and, even more quickly, get you moving in the opposite direction. Once you're stopped, it takes only the slightest touch of discouragement to get you moving away from joy.
Each person's influence on your life leaves a huge impact. Whether they slightly bump you in one direction or they give you a forceful shove in the other, that influence will affect how you move through the rest of your life. If someone provides you with a slight bit of momentum in the joyful direction, it's just that much more resistance against the next negative person. If it hadn't been for that person giving you that nudge, for the rest of your life you never would have been as joyful as you are because that bit of momentum never would have been there. I hope that makes sense.
I'm going to make up some arbitrary numbers to help the analogy. Basically, if someone's momentum is currently at 100, and someone bumps it up to 101 then forevermore, that person will have a momentum that is one unit greater than it would have been otherwise. So, really, that change in momentum has an eternal effect on that person's life.
You have an eternal effect on people's lives. You can choose to provide positivity and joy, or else you can slow them down and forever hold them back from being as joyful as they possibly could have been. As a Christian, my standard for joy is Jesus Christ. If we want to provide someone with the most eternally satisfying and fulfilling joy, we should strive to act as Christ did as well as share the good news of His sacrifice to give us eternal life. What greater joy is there than knowing that you will have life eternally?
Remember this the next time you interact with anyone. That interaction has consequences, either good or bad, that will echo in the eternity of anyone that it affects.
