Saints, sinners and Saturdays

I was going to come right out and just say the fol­low­ing, but I feel the need to pre­face it with some sort of disclaimer.

I’m no saint. I have been known to almost revel in the mis­for­tune of people whom I act­ively dis­like (I don’t use the word “hate” about people, not if I can help it). In my defence, I would add that I don’t do this all the time — just very occa­sion­ally. Yet it’s even more awful to admit that these feel­ings of schaden­freude are enjoy­able at the time.

Dis­claimer over. Here’s the other bit.

Being happy is won­der­ful. Of course it is. Who doesn’t want to be happy? (Silly ques­tion. Don’t answer). Maybe it’s a symp­tom of get­ting older and sup­posedly wiser, but these days the hap­pi­ness of other people some­times makes me even hap­pier than I am when I’m happy for myself. This psy­cho­lo­gical con­di­tion — rather than just being regarded as unselfish, which I don’t think it is — could pos­sibly be entitled “reverse schadenfreude.”

Apo­lo­gies for that extremely con­fus­ing para­graph, fea­tur­ing one too many uses of the word “happy.” I hope you under­stand what I mean. I’m sure you do, because you are all deeply intu­it­ive people.