Food for thought — Is it better to be unhappy because of someone else's happiness?\u00a0 Or to be happy because of someone else's unhappiness?<\/p>\n
Truly, both situations have a hint of darkness injected in it but such is life… as no one's perfect and we sometimes succumb to eating the forbidden fruit.\u00a0 However, there are instances where it's a matter of picking the better of 2 evils.\u00a0 Is it more tolerable to have the green monster constantly residing inside you or to find euphoria in sadistic vileness — or perhaps schadenfraude, to put it simply?<\/p>\n
Envy — one of the seven cardinal sins.\u00a0 It's a household name, isn't it?\u00a0 If it doesn't constantly haunt our lives, surely it has paid us a visit at least once in our lives.\u00a0 It's an emotion that leads us to feel even more emotions — mostly those that we don't thoroughly enjoy feeling.\u00a0 It's the frustration of not being able to reach for what we want… and then seeing someone else possess what we desire, that's when situations turn sour.\u00a0 Even deadly.<\/p>\n
It's almost normal to feel envious, isn't it?\u00a0 However, does it absolve us from committing a grave sin attributed to our passion for earthly matters? <\/p>\n
Parrott (1991) managed to split a hair strand by distinguishing 2 kinds of envy: the non-malicious kind and the malicious.\u00a0 The former is a classic case.\u00a0 It simply denotes one's desire for something that another person has.\u00a0 “I wish I have what you have.”\u00a0 Aren't we all guilty of having thoughts like that everyday?\u00a0 It's as habitual as having dinner as it's human nature.\u00a0 However, the latter kind involves wrath and an unhealthy amount of passion for something.\u00a0 “I wish you do not have what you have.”\u00a0 It's almost as if it's continued by: only because I cannot have it.\u00a0 Not only is it envy on steroids, but it's also selfishness and abomination all rolled into one.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The difference is — so you're envious, what are you going to do about it?\u00a0 That's when having options start becoming dangerous.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As for schadenfraude, it is the happiness in finding malice over someone else's mishap.\u00a0 The unfortunate mentality either stems from disdain felt towards someone or even from a general sense of envy — perhaps with a dash of relief that it didn't happen to us.\u00a0 Nonetheless, it's still evil at work disguised as extreme joy, especially since it's entirely possible that schadenfraude could be the most sincere kind of happiness ever to exist.\u00a0 It's the sad truth.<\/p>\n
However, the universe always finds a way to maintain some sort of equilibrium on earth.\u00a0 And for this particular matter, a spoonful of karma is prescribed by the doctor.\u00a0 Surely, finding happiness in someone else's sorrow isn't a difficult thing to do — which means, that someone else finding happiness in your sorrow is also as easy as pie.\u00a0 No matter how secret our little schadenfraude moment is, it will always find a way to knock us back and sigh.\u00a0 We were asking for it — and we knew it.<\/p>\n
Maybe Arthur Schopenhauer has given us an answer regarding my question up top: “To feel envy is human, to enjoy schadenfraude is devilish.”\u00a0 To feel the emotion is perfectly okay, but reacting adversely towards it is what draws the line between human and inhuman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
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