July 22, 2022
Freudenfreude
Freudenfreude (finding joy in other people’s pleasure) is truly one of the best habits that I’ve managed to get out of this pandemmick, and lest you think that I’m being repulsively sanctimonious right now, I can promise you that I am also well acquainted with freudenfreude’s much less salubrious evil twin (although I aspire to be better than that, and even sometimes succeed). But there was a time, when things were really rough and uncertain, that if I hadn’t figured out how to be happy for other people, I wouldn’t have been able to be happy at all, because there just wasn’t a whole lot of goodness going around.
This was about a year and a half ago, when the pandemic fatigue was real, and vaccines were only just beginning to happen. The very first person I knew who received a Covid vaccine was a friend who is a first responder, and we made him a card, delivered it to his house, because we weren’t going anywhere else, and had all the time in the world to do so. I wasn’t sure when I would get my own shot—predictions were for September 2021, perhaps?—but he needed immunity far more than I did, and I was happy for him, and for all the other people who love him who’d get to worry a little bit less. In a time that was rather bleak, this was a very good day.
And then friends in America started getting their vaccines, and I started saying, “I’m so happy for you!!” when they posted about it on social media. Partly because I was happy for them, but also because I’d come to realize that it didn’t really matter who was getting vaccines exactly (obviously it does, vaccine equity is a thing, and access is far from fair, especially on a global scale, but see, I was practising being magnanimous) because a shot for any of us is a shot for all of us. It helped too that those early glimpses of vaccine rollouts were a harbinger of similar goodness coming for us down the line. (I’ve felt the same seeing US kids under five getting their shots, knowing that so many families in my own community are going to be feeling the relief of having their own small children vaccinated very shortly!)
Possibly the root of my freudenfreude really is selfish after all, or maybe just not only altruistic, because I really do think we all win in a world in which good things happen and people get what they need. (I remember reading in Tara Henley’s Lean Out about how wealth inequity even made wealthy people less happy, because who wants the world surrounding them to be going to shit?)
Also being happy for other people was such a better feeling than what we’d all been through over the previous year, when you’d see someone on a playground swing, for example, and become enraged at the way they were putting lives in danger. When people were furious at twenty-somethings for sitting in the park. I was finished with the self-righteousness, with the shaming, and altogether tired of having the joy sucked right out of my life, and so every bit of goodness someone else experienced shone a little light upon my world. Family reunions, holidays, exquisite cakes, backyard pools, masked gatherings with friends six feet away in the garden—I was there for it. I was THRILLED for you.
It helped that I was finding my own small pleasures, going out of my way to care for myself and the people I loved. I knew what it meant, is what I mean, the hugeness of these small bits of normal, pleasure and connection. I felt it too.
When we FINALLY arrived in England in April, two days after our cancelled journey in March 2020, after such a long road, so much sadness, stress, and bother, a lot of people in my circles were feeling the freudenfreude, because they told me so. So many people were so happy for us, because they knew what that trip meant after what we’d all been through, how wonderful it was to connect with family again, to have any kind of a getaway after so much loss and anxiety.
It wasn’t just a trip. Nothing is “just a” anything anymore. A child’s birthday party in the park, dinner in a restaurant, being there when your grandfather blows out the candles on his birthday cake, a picnic with old friends, cousins playing together, sleepover parties, backyard bbqs, a trip to the movies, a day at the beach: I am so so happy for you.
And I am so so happy to be happy for you.
Last night, because most of the cloth napkins were in the laundry and I thought maybe white damask were not the best ones to use with homemade pizza, I found a package of paper ones in the dresser where I keep table linen. At first I didn’t recognize them but then realized they were the ones the wonderful owner of Talewind Books in Sechelt put in my basket after I’d signed the first of my two pandemic books. She said, I don’t think there’ll be a big launch for this, will there, but use these napkins (black, with CELEBRATE, in gold letters across them) for something festive! Last night was a perfect occasion for them. Dinner for 4 members of my family, and me and John, only one of the sweet sweet moments of this summer, and yes, I am happy for everyone who also has this opportunity after the long years of distances and masks (which we will still use and observe when we need to). The paper napkins with CELEBRATE, the pizzas, the laughter, the soccer ball on the Egmont field with crows in the old apple tree across from the Community Hall. “It wasn’t just a trip. Nothing is “just a” anything anymore.”
I loved this post Kerry! I have found that the happier I get the happier I am for others too. Thanks for putting it into words and for the word itself fruedenfreude!