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NewsvineRecently, I’ve begun to think that I may not be a very nice person. At first glance, you might think this is obviously false. After all, I’m friendly and personable. I give money to charity. And I only torture animals on Tuesdays.
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I used to believe that I possessed Gandhi-like levels of humanity, which I carried with a beatific smile. Lately, however, real life has had a transformative effect on my self-perception.
This is disturbing. While I enjoy being miserable, grumpy and bitter, I don’t want to be thought of as unpleasant.
Misery lies at the heart of this newfound imperfection — the misery I feel at the success of others. Or, to quote legendary columnist Navin Sivanandam, it’s the Freudenschade (Stanford Daily, April 28th).
Now, it’s not that I want my peers to fail; I just don’t want them to do well. Every time I hear of others’ triumphs, a little part of me shrivels and dies. Especially when it comes to my friends.
My current bitterness has come from applying for postdocs. A few of my theoretical physics buddies and I are graduating this year, which means we’ve all been out on the job market, desperately begging universities to provide us with food, shelter and undergraduates to leer at.
The game is finally coming to a close this week. The offers started to arrive just before break, so I’ve had to deal with whoops of joy from my colleagues for the last month.
It’s horrible. Sickening even. Whenever I hear some miserable bastard just found himself a job at MIT, I feel ill. After my stomach lurches, the emotional rollercoaster kicks off. On top of the misery, there’s the anger — the pure, unadulterated rage that I can’t avoid feeling at a friend’s good fortune.
Of course, a large part of it is the fairness of it all. Smart, hard-working people get top-tier jobs because they deserve them. And that’s just awful for your self-esteem — not only are you performing below par, you’re doing so because, in fact, you are below par.
Friends’ accomplishments are much less troubling when they’re undeserved. After all, blaming the Fates and whining at the unfairness of it all is perfectly respectable among grad students.
So without the reassurance of uncooperative providence, what is there to do but wallow in depression, in misery and in anger?
Which brings me back on point. How bad a person are you if, when your friends get great jobs that they absolutely deserve, you resent them and their success? To what circle of hell do you belong?
I suppose the answer should be along the lines of a very bad person. On the other hand, I can comfort myself with the thought that — at least amongst grad students — Freudenschade is universal.