Schadenfreude: FOMO meets Fairness

When I hear about people going to parties or I see photos on Facebook of friends with their arms around each other I get mad. I saw Alicia Keye’s birthday party on Instagram and I felt filled with judgemental rage. Am I experiencing FOMO or am I angry that these people are not as rigid in their rule-following as I am? How can that person be inside that other person’s house?! Without a mask?! The truth is that I don’t know anyone’s story. I don’t know who is in a pod or who has been vaccinated or who has had COVID recently and has a magic three-month immunity window. I feel more in control if I think I know things. Then I can properly judge those people and feel better about myself.

When I experience FOMO, my missing out hackles rise up and my justice tentacles wave madly. I want to drive around in my car with a megaphone and call out the unfairness of it all. I am missing out even though I am doing it by choice. I could do those things, but I don’t because I don’t want to risk getting COVID. I don’t want to spread COVID. Those people who are making those choices are assessing their own risks. And hopefully, in their risk assessment, they have a plan for not spreading the virus.

There are FOMO opportunities all over the place. Sometimes I’m missing out and sometimes I’m getting the perks. I can go to the bookstore near my house and look for a book (20-minute limit) but my sister in Chicago, an avid reader, can’t go into her local bookstore. My sixteen-year-old niece in New Orleans goes to parties and sleepovers but my daughter Lucia hasn’t had a social life in almost a year.

It’s not fair! I want everyone to play by the same rules, to get the same number of Red Vines, to have the same amount of time in the beanbag chair. It’s old stuff, this sense of fairness and it comes out big time with COVID. In response to my big feelings about not getting what others are getting, I find a hard-backed chair in the corner of the room to sit in, cross my arms and look down at them in judgment — those losers, eating their stupid Red Vines, sitting in that dumb beanbag chair.

I don’t like sitting in that hard-backed chair of judgment. Honestly, it’s kind of lonely and depressing. But I find myself there time and time again because I want the world to be fair. I want the white supremacist terrorists to be treated like the Black Lives Matter protesters. I want the COVID deniers to get COVID instead of the COVID rule abiders. The fact that some people still get to have a semi-normal life and not get COVID brings out my very worst. If life were fair the people who play by the rules would have all the Red Vines and get to nap in the bean bag chair.

The unsavory mix of FOMO and fairness is schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is to experience joy or delight over someone else’s misfortune. Schadenfreude is the leprosy of emotions. It is truly undesirable.

The feeling of schadenfreude, for me, comes from sitting in that chair of judgment for too long, from not appreciating the very simple fact that life isn’t fair. It just isn’t. Experiencing schadenfreude is an embarrassing admission. I’m not proud of it and I’d like to get rid of it.

As I watched the imbeciles destroying our nation’s Capitol on January 6th, I was secretly hoping that they would learn something. That, in acting so repugnantly, they would all get COVID and understand how justice really works. And when they were struck down by the virus I would feel vindicated, elated with my righteousness.

But instead, my local congresswoman, a COVID rule-follower, locked in a room with a hundred other congresswomen and men got COVID because some dingbat congressmen in the room refused to wear masks. No justice there. Not fair. 

FOMO is real. We all feel it in different ways. Some people wish they had a big family that made life interesting. Others wish they could escape from their families and just have a week alone in their house. Some people wish they lived in the sun and others wished they could ski every weekend. But FOMO is also pointless because it is just an invitation to suffering. Choosing to wish we were somewhere that we aren’t or to have something that we don’t is part of what creates schadenfreude.

And fairness? It’s not real. Growing up, one of my mom’s mantras with my two sisters and me was, “Life isn’t fair.” I hated that saying and I never say it to my own daughter. But I know it. I believe it. Fairness isn’t possible because people live their lives according to their life circumstances and values and none of us can know what those are for anyone but ourselves. The more energy I put towards trying to find fairness, the more my schadenfreude bubbles up inside. 

I don’t want schadenfreude in my life. Yuck. To rid myself of this odious sentiment, I must remind myself to acknowledge the ever-presence of FOMO — to see it for what it is and let it go. And I must internalize my mother’s mantra, the simple truth that life isn’t fair. It just isn’t. There’s no debate. Sometimes you get some Red Vines, and sometimes you don’t. But being pissed at the guy sitting in the bean bag chair isn’t going to make you feel better.