Schadenfreude
Don’t you love the way that word just rolls off the tongue? Schadenfreude..schadenfreude.
I first became acquainted with this word while reading a novel, the name of which escapes me now. I had to look up the meaning because I had never heard of it, and when I found out what it was, I thought: “Here’s something German I can really embrace.”
What a great word! And the meaning, for those innocents who are unfamiliar: taking joy or comfort. in other people’s misfortunes. In other word, “better him than me.” Schadenfreude is the reason that crowds gather at accidents, why people are obsessed with other people’s misfortunes, and in general why people spend their energy where it can do them absolutely no good: focused on the fortunes and misfortunes of others. Schadenfreude explains why the media and lots of regular folks are so interested in Tiger Woods’ fall from grace; schadenfreude in part explains so much of our celebrity driven culture where people talk about celebrities in the first person, as if they were that person’s actual friends.
While we can’t banish schadenfreude from the human experience, we can try and cultivate what is probably the diametrically opposed emotion: compassion for other people’s plight. I have always found real compassion to be a tricky thing to pull off. I want to empathize with the other person’s situation, but I don’t want to make the other person feel like a victim, because that promotes helplessness. It turns out to be a really fine line between compassion and “feeling sorry” for someone. When we feel sorry for someone, I think there is a definite element of schadenfreude that comes in the mix. True compassion is usually schadenfreude-free(love that term). True compassion comes from the heart but also from the mind: it recognizes that each of us finds ourselves in challenging situations despite the best of intentions and despite our intelligence. It recognizes our fate as humans to experience all the required emotions, situations, and states of mind: happiness, sadness, “dis-ease,” wellness, success, failure. If we didn’t experience the full range of these things, how would we still know we are human? How would we know to appreciate some of the things we have?
In this winter season when there are abundant examples of “haves” and “have-nots” all around, practice compassion with all those you meet. Know about schadenfreude -it is a really cool word by any standard- but don’t let it get in the mix.
