Not so instant karma gonna get you

I believe the Germans call it schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the suffering of another.

My ex-wife moving in with an unemployable, alcoholic, drug dealer comes to mind... heh.

Sure. My very first boyfriend dumped me for another girl, shattered my heart, but I sat still long enough for him to not only beg me to take him back several months later (which I didn't) but witness his subsequent marriage fall apart several years later. He tried to make another comeback and I turned him down again. A few years after that, I showed up at our class reunion looking utterly fabulous and heard later that he could talk of nothing but me, me and more me. Poor slob.

Karma baby. It's a mother.

He tried to contact me about a year ago. Sent a message along with his phone number. I never responded.

Oh yeah. Let me tell you about my cousin Lenny.

He was a bigoted assh*le that treated people like **** his whole life. I remember a lot of little examples of this guy's vicious, selfish nature. Here are just a couple of them.

You know those fish that puff themselves up in self-defense? He caught one once, and he and my other cousin, who was too young to know better, got it all agitated so it puffed up like a big ball and then my cousin pitched it to him and he splattered it all over the yard. What an assh*le.

Also, he turned his kids into little racists. I remember him telling this story once about him and the family driving through a black neighborhood and he thought it was so funny that his five-year-old son kept pointing out the window and saying, "look at all the n*ggers, dad!" Oh, how that made him laugh.

Anyway, he treated pretty much everyone like ****, he was a racist dick, and he would screw anybody over if it helped him out, without any remorse about it at all.

Sometime ago, maybe five to seven years, he had a massive stroke, and is now living in a home, all alone, without even the motility it takes to turn his head. He is living a daily nightmare now, and will for the rest of his life. And I think he's only in his late fifties now. Karma. It's a bitch.

I've been thinking about this A LOT. Shadenfreude.

Got hurt very badly by an old "friend". Between the revenge fantasies and the pain, the anger, and a firm determination not to allow this person to ruin me, I wondered about how it would feel to see his all of his horrible acts catch up with him.
This is not someone who simply screwed up or hurt me. His life is basically an elaborate lie and plot driven by self interest alone.
It really scared me to know someone like that. Intimately. That someone could truly be that way on such a deep level.

Recently got wind of some downturn of events for him and it gave me immense pleasure initially. He even attempted to contact me.
It made me sick to realize that my heart skipped a beat and I was actually excited and happy on one level to have him come to me.

I stayed firm and didn't do anything stupid. He moved me emotionally still but it didn't determine my behavior towards him.
I am very proud of myself for that.
He remains out of my life and is losing life in my heart and head.

I had pity even after all that hurt and pain inflicted. Pleasure, pity, and pause now.

I can say now that all my heart really desires is for him, and these people, to DO BETTER.
Concequences gives me pleasure. It gives them a chance to do better or to sit in their decisions once and for all.

I am of the Simpson's Generation and remember an episode where Homer imagines Flanders going down. Flanders didn't hurt him or anything, isn't a bad dude , but regardless, it was an example I thought of.
He pictures his business failing. That makes him feel good.
He pictures him broke and losing his home. That makes him feel good.
He pictures him buried and standing over his grave. "Eaah. Too much."

That's how I feel. Death or total destruction is too much. I don't ultimately want to see more pain in the world.

Simply pure cause and effect coming into play - man, that can be sweet and damn it - healing!

My ex was an immature SOB who never cut his umbilical cord. He was a lousy husband, and worse father. It wasn't that he did anything terrible to my son. He just was not there for him, an absolute non-entity. I figure that he spent no more than 8 years of his life living away from "mommy dearest", four of them when he was married to me.

When she died, he took some borders into his house(the one that he inherited from mom)because he could not stand to be alone. They proceeded to stay as "squatters".

In his early sixties, he developed Parkinson's and Alzheimer's Disease. He died, alone and unloved, in a nursing home.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy!

My step father had a stroke. He lay on the floor two or three days, according to one person I know. He spent at least a year in a hospital bed, fully aware, paralyzed on the right side, unable to do much of anything, except smoke cigarettes. He was tormented by my oldest half brother and his cousin. One example: The cousin says, "What does it matter to him? The old man's never getting out of here alive anyway." The old man managed to get his middle finger in the air.

I, like most people, cannot completely give up some pleasure in bad things happening to people I know to have done very nasty or bad things.....but I try very hard to overcome it....though perhaps I attempt to foster very different feelings is a different way of putting it...I don't think denying or suppressing feelings does any good.


I guess I just do not think that vengeance is a useful or helpful emotion....and that it harms those experiencing joy in it, and, somehow, the world in general. (IS it an emotion? I don't think Schadenfreude covers it, because I understand that to mean taking pleasure in ANYONE's suffering, not just that of those who have wronged us.)


I absolutely understand the feeling, especially where the harm has been great, but I strongly feel it to be something we are well not to welcome into our hearts and minds.


This is going to sound insufferably priggish, I know, and it truly is not meant that way.

I agree with that, to a degree. I don't take pleasure in my cousin's terrible circumstance, but at the same time, I can see the balancing of cosmic accounts. Actually, I think what happened to him is way beyond evening things out.

That being said, I can definitely take some pleasure in minor gotchas for people who deserve it. Like say a teenager being a real disrespectful brat to his parents and then at some point down the line having kids that treat him or her the exact same way. Or a big bully stealing a kid's skateboard, then while riding it, the wheels fall off and he ends up doing a face plant into some loose gravel or something.

That kind of **** I can appreciate and enjoy. It's all a matter of degree, I guess.

I can get a giggle from a nice comeuppance. A little poetic justice never hurt anyone. But karmic retribution? That's a doozy.

I really don't know why - I certainly don't see myself as somehow morally superior to the average Joe/Jane - but I don't really take any pleasure, per se, at seeing the suffering of someone I think is a bad person. There's kind of a comfort and reassurance in knowing that sometimes I get to see, in this life, some people get the negative consequences of their actions. But I just don't get a giggle - oh well...

This happened to me lately, by the by...
I was watching Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel the other night. they were showing a story about how the NFL was covering up studies about the long-term deadly side effects of the head concussions football players get.
One of the people they used as an example of the degenerative effects of the concussions was a guy named Terry Long. He was a lineman I had met when we went to East Carolina University. I had been impressed at the time by what a colossal arrogant prick the guy was - really cruel and dismissive of people, really boastful and generally hard to live with.
He had ended up with bad emotional problems, and shot and killed himself.
I didn't mourn his passing.

oh I didn't get a giggle over the story I read, believe me.

yeah, I think it's more of satisfaction that what goes around comes around. I don't feel pleasure, but I certainly don't have much sympathy.

I said I got a giggle out of a good comeuppance, which might be where the "giggle" comes from. I do get a giggle out of it when, say, someone who holds themselves up as an "expert" on something gets shot down publicly. Hypocrites are almost always good for a laugh.

When the neighborhood tattle-tale came by the other day to tattle on Mo for tattling I laughed my head off.

Karma, though. You should be able to attempt to polish your tarnished karma in this life. Being seriously ill or dead takes away that opportunity.

Every day.

When that a-hole who is weaving in and out of traffic and trying desperatly to get 1 car lengh ahead, right on my ass, then on someone elses ass, then on my ass again, gets stuck at the red light right beside me.

Ha.

I agree with Dlowan--I don't want to be priggish, but I don't want to give the unpleasant people in my life--or my memories--any sort of foothold in the kingdom of my mind.

If I ever sucumb to organized religion it may be because "'Vengence is mine," sayeth the Lord.'" Knowing the deity is in charge of vengence would satisfy my nasty side--until I felt priggish again.

Meanwhile, karma and the Balance of the Universe will have to do.

And when it goes down, and I'm blessed enough to bear witness, I slap Him a high-five.

I think I know what you mean, miss.

I used to have a manager, by the name a Tom Parker. He ripped me off, man!

He was always puttin' me in those silly ass movies, and I never got the chance to show my true acting talent.

One time, I had to play an Arab Sheik in one a those movies. Who in the hell got the bright idea to cast me as an Arab Sheik?

Anyway, I loved that costume, man. I looked good in that thang. I used to ride around Hollyweird in mah Arab Sheik outfit.

But after I died, my daughter, Lisa Marie, sued the pants off that Tom Parker. My little girl won, and she gotta whole lotta money outta him.

That was some serious karma, jack!

remember when this picture was taken?

I think it was during Viva Las Vegas.