There are 2 people I have had the unpleasure of knowing for going on 4 decades now. Greedy, self-centered, dishonest, narcissistic, lying, cheating, self-righteous, thieving, no good pieces of amphibian shit.
I’ve recently learned that both of them have terminal illnesses. For one the prognosis is 3 months to a year, so a very short time.
I can’t honestly say this is their “Comeuppance” as the same health problems would have occurred had they been wonderful people. Had someone they had mistreated over the years dumped the hot oil from the french fry vat over their heads and watched them melt like Raiders of the Lost Ark, that would be a Comeuppance. (Someone once told me they had fantasized about doing that. Example of how much these people are despised by others).
What causes me pause are my own thoughts. To snicker in glee over the horrible pain they are going to experience makes me feel crappy about my own ethics and morals. But already more than one person has told one of these people how “happy they are that soon they’ll live in a world they aren’t in anymore” (true para quote).
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that to a dying person. But I do take solace in the idea of neither of these two making others miserable anymore. It is sad that neither has any friends and few relatives that will tolerate them anymore. But they themselves have caused that.
So, what are your thoughts on this? When bad things happen to rotten people. Should we take some joy in it? Or does that in a way make us as vile as them?
This is the comeuppance part. I wouldn’t wish a painful death on anyone, no matter how horrible a person; but I wouldn’t sympathize with them for being alone at the end.
These two girls I went to high school with were diagnosed with cancer within the past 5 years or so. One of them is an amazing, giving, caring woman (she became a pastor in her 30s) and the other is the ex-girlfriend of not only my brother but 2 other friends, and my ex friend, and one of the few people in this world that I truly loathe.
I have a hard time saying that one got cancer as a “comeuppance” since the other one got it too. And I am not HAPPY about the “bad” one getting cancer. I am just ambivalent and unable to extend an ounce of sympathy, even to her husband and kids.
The “good” one died this Christmas. I did a good bit of crying and sobbing. I will not shed a tear for the other. (Who probably won’t die from cancer after all, or something)
If there were real, working laws of karma, and bad people got sick, or hurt, or lost in the woods, or outright killed because of their bad behavior, that would at least reflect some rough kind of justice.
But that they got sick, in this world, is nothing more than a coincidence. Umpteem million good people are suffering from illness. There isn’t any causal connection, and thus there’s no point whatever in celebrating.
I hated Ronald Reagan about as much as it is possible to hate another human. But I grieved with him and his loved ones when he was suffering from senile dementia. If the God Ares had struck him down with dementia for demeaning the rules of war, that would have had me laughing in joy. That he got it for no reason at all is only a pointless tragedy.
As long as the “karma” fits the crime, I’m fine with it.
A slow painful death sounds excessive. Unless the person we’re talking about is a serial rapist or something.
It’s worth noting that some horrible people will die, highly popular, highly successful, highly regarded, and surrounded by family and friends and many loved ones.
This isn’t a fair world.
Holding a grudge is letting a really shitty tenant take residence in your heart rent-free. By all means, cut ties and don’t continue exposing yourself to whatever specifically it is that they do to you, but the energy required to hate someone is better spent on something positive.
And I know that’s hard and I’m not perfect and I still have a grudge or two. But I do try to be the bigger person.
And fuck cancer, and terrible protracted terminal illnesses of all kinds. At least don’t wish that on them. Fry oil is humane in comparison.
If it’s a toxic person I used to know, but have since kicked them out of my life, I probably wouldn’t have much of an emotional reaction (other than maybe surprise that I even found out about it before they died).
There is one toxic family member whom I have cut ties with, but the rest of my immediate family inexplicably refuse to do the same, even though no one has any illusion that he’s a good man to know – no one who knows him can stand him. It makes things difficult when I want to visit with the family I care about – he tries really hard to manufacture opportunities to pick a fight with me, so there’s always a dance of trying to avoid him while trying to spend time with those he lives with. So in that regard I’m anxious to have him gone completely and will probably feel relief that he’s no longer there to make things unnecessarily complicated and annoying. (I wish I could convince family to un-complicate things themselves, but that’s not a fight I will win so I leave it be.)
I would try to avoid actions that display your schadenfraude. Like snickering or saying stuff like “what comes around goes around”. Or cheering when you hear someone’s bad news.
But our feelings are our own. There’s nothing wrong with feeling a certain way as long as you don’t make a big show, or let those feelings overtake you.
When I’m feeling schadenfraude, I sometimes catch myself by asking if I’m due some hardship. And that thought alone makes me feel not so gleeful. But sure, I do experience it sometimes. I think it’s my mind’s way of finding fairness in an unjust universe.
I grew up with a kid who, despite being on the honor roll, etc. was not a nice person, and when we were in junior high, he tried to bully me into committing suicide.
Guess what his father did several years after we graduated?
I knew his dad slightly, and he didn’t deserve this. But his son did IMNSHO. He was not well-liked by other kids, who hung around with him in droves for reasons I never quite figured out. I don’t think he dealt drugs or had a source for booze, nor was he a champion athlete, which would have explained it.
I even got a sympathy card and wrote in it, “Hi (name deleted)! Remember when we were in 9th grade and you tried to get me to kill myself? HA! HA! HA!” I didn’t mail it, because I knew I wouldn’t see his reaction when he opened the card. Other people’s reactions to me telling them this are about evenly divided between “You are one sick puppy” and “You should have mailed that card”, with a few people telling me that I should have driven over to his house and given it to him myself.
I did regret it briefly when I saw him at our 10-year HS reunion, and couldn’t say, “How did you like that card I sent you when your dad died?”
More recently, I had a Really Bad Boss who, after a near-fatal car accident, had local TV stations and the newspaper do big, sappy stories about her recovery. All the reporters’ e-mail boxes crashed because of the volume of people, myself included, who responded to tell them what kind of person she really was.
Imdifference. They are going to die, and so will I, and so will you.
Which is regardless of personal merit.
Unless I was involved in killing them, as painlessly as possible, their lives and deaths would have no claim on my attention.
When i found out my mother had broken her leg and was laid up I was quite pleased given how many bones of mine she had broken in my childhood. When I later found out she was in the middle of the bush alone and had to drag herself to help over a number of hours I felt bad for my initial reaction because I like to think I am less cruel than she was but a simple fracture would have been perfect.
Best day of my life was when she was (not quite legally) euthanased though I wouldn’t have minded her hanging around and suffering a little bit more rather than the painless exit she bought early in her cancer. Not particularly proud of that but also don’t lose any sleep over it. I like to think her toxicity finally spread inwards instead of outwards even though I know cancer doesn’t discriminate.
I try to avoid any sort of schadenfraude. If another person expresses theirs, I try not to encourage or continue it or egg it on. When I’m feeling schadenfreude, I try to stop it. But I’m not too hard on myself if I feel it. We’re human after all.
I like to think of Jesus dying on the cross between 2 criminals and on his death, the one asked to be forgiven and Jesus welcomed him into heaven. The other cursed Jesus.
So I’d like to hope that the bad people of tis world would have a major change of heart once they are near death. It must be horrible to be facing your death knowing that all you ever did was evil and people will be glad you are gone.
So who knows. Maybe a kind word to them in this there last days might cause a major turnaround and they will do one righteous act in their life like give money to a charity or something. At least you can say you tried.
You know what’s odd about family? After they pass away over the years people begin to forget the bad and future generations usually only know the good. Like for example, they will know great grandpa started a business but they wont know he molested his kids.
Huh, I find I have a diametrically opposed reaction to this type of situation. Even if I’ve excised you from my world, and my thoughts for being toxic, abusive, loathsome or evil, when I hear news of your wretched illness a switch will flip and I will feel both empathy and sympathy for your suffering.
You’re not getting back into my thoughts or world, of course. Nor will this alter my assessment of your character. But I will feel honest sympathy and wish for an end to your suffering. And any anger, disappointment, resentment will become impossible to manifest from that moment on.
It’s like everything else falls away and I see you now just as generic raw suffering humanity.
I don’t begrudge nearwildheaven his/her bitterness; many of us were bullied in gradeschool, but some of us were bullied far worse than others. The fact that many other sympathized with him/her suggests that maybe those kinds of feelings were not unreasonable.
