Even an Unconditional Apology Didn’t Ensure Personal Satisfaction

It’s time for me to reflect and make a pragmatic decision

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Schadenfreude is perhaps the most appropriate term to describe what I am going to narrate now. The word, derived from German, is essentially a combination of two words, schaden (damage or harm) and freude (joy or delight), and indicates a negative mentality.

It basically describes a tendency among certain individuals to derive sadistic pleasure by either humiliating another person on one or more occasions, or gleefully observing them suffer.

There are instances when you and your friends join forces to pull another person down, and that tendency is also a manifestation of schadenfreude. Whether it is intended or unintentional, such sadistic actions have a tendency to hurt.

In this case it was a combination of humiliation, hurt and suffering.

There are instances in life when you tend to learn the biggest lessons by following the most avoidable of circumstances. Such episodes are immensely forgettable, no doubt, but the takeaways from them stay with us for a lifetime. There was a particular incident that forced me to introspect.

Back then, my social media engagement was at an absolute peak. I was making a concerted…