The Zen of Schadenfreude

I know people say never say "never."

Fuck it. NEVER AGAIN.

Never again will I be treated like shit.
Never again will I not be compensated for my value.
Never again will I be in an environment where there is no accountability.
Never again will I engage when the stakes are so small.
Never again will I stay in a toxic work environment.
Never again will I be a disgruntled postdoc.

And while it may not be very Zen of me to jump for joy every 15 min when I think that this is my last day of imprisonment within the walls of the ivory tower, I just can't help myself. Yesterday, I had dinner with some friends and one of them, TheBeachcomber asked me what I was going to do on my last day. Confused, I asked him what he meant by that.

He explained that when he was 18 years old, he had a job in a gasbar where his boss treated him like shit.  So on his last day he had decided to pick a big fat fight with any customer. When a customer complained about some small thing, TheBeachcomber ripped him a new one. And the customer asked for his name and TheBeachcomber slapped his name tag down on the countertop and said, "Go right ahead, tell my supervisor."  That was an awesome last day of that job.  So, what have you always wanted to do or say to your supervisor?" 

And really the only thing that I could think of that I wanted was to walk into my supervisor's office and tell her that she seriously fucked up. But the fact that I went and got a job said so much more.

These past two weeks have shown me exactly what happens when an academic realizes just how much they fucked themselves. My supervisor and soon to be former supervisor, RedBull is just that person. You wouldn't think she was the same person who only two months ago decided to give me a job performance warning for my 'lack of productivity.' In these last two weeks, she has been so incredibly nice and complementary. It's such a transparent agenda. She wants to see all three manuscripts from my 1 and 1/2 year postdoc come to fruition. And she relies entirely on my generosity to see those to the end. Because if they don't get published, she ain't gettin' anymore funding dollars. Luckily for her I'm totally OCD about finishing things.

It has, however, been a terrible week for my buddhist inclinations because on top of the schadenfreude I feel in my current postdoc, I learned that my previous postdoc supervisor, Dr. Add'EmUp had to shut down his lab. When I spoke to a PhD student of another PI who shared the same lab, she told me that after I left, there was a lack of direction and productivity in the lab.

So with all the schadenfreude, I've been asking myself why do I and so many others get such pleasure in the misfortune of others?

The answer? Conceit.

I think that I feel such joy because I felt such anger and betrayal by those same people. Ultimately, the basis of that emotion is an attachment to ego or an idea of self. We're surrounded by people who, Gil Fronsdal, one of my favorite buddhist teachers, says play 'selfing games.' Given the current rage around the film/book The Hunger Games, it's possible to also think of this as a buddhist version of the hunger games. An example of the selfing game is when as a postdoc/gradstudent we have the conceit to think that we can do a better job at supervising. Or as a professor/faculty/supervisor we have the conceit to think that we were better postdocs/gradstudent than our current ones or even the ones whose blogs we read and criticize in the comments section. Any form of comparison - trying to prove we're superior, inferior and/or even equal requires conceit and comes with emotional suffering.  

Conceit extends to how I/we define ourselves.  And when I think about it, its always in terms of relationships.   I am a scientist, wife, sister, friend.  It's what Gil calls, a relational self.  We know of our identity in terms of our relationships with others.  But if our idea of self is tied up in those roles then we don't have an independent sense of self.  And much of our suffering comes from believing that our relational self is all of who we are.  And so when we define our self as a scientist/postdoc/gradstudent/prof and any part of our work is challenged or questioned, it's as if WE are being attacked.  I can't even count the number of times I've gotten all defensive about my scientific record.  Or the number of times at a social event, I've let it slip that I am a scientist.

One of the wonderful pieces of GilWisdom is that the practise of meditation is a self-identity lubricant.  Our ideas about self-identity often get stuck and consequently become fragile.  Sitting in meditation reveals the ways in which we are stuck and helps to dissolve in small ways the stuckness.  It provides a sense of self, independent of relationships.  A non-relational sense of self.

So although my schadenfreude feels so darn good, it is clearly my relational self asserting itself.  Luckily I have two weeks off before I start my new job to find the cushion and a little non-relational sense of self.