A friend of ours is being inducted into her college's athletic Hall of Fame next week for her tennis achievements. My wife and I were invited to come to Florida to see her induction but, alas, can't make it.
So, we'll take her out to dinner here and celebrate her good fortune. We'll toast her success perhaps with a drink or two.
I bring this up because, as a country, we seem to resent it every time somebody other than ourselves does well. Every lottery winner is looked at suspiciously. A lot of people caught in the AIG crossfire -- lower level people who had little to do with the major fraud the company is accused of and who worked hard at their jobs to earn their bonuses -- are catching hell from everybody.
We have, by and large, become a mean-spirited country. It has always been that way for some politically minded-souls. But now this seems to be extending to more than those folks who live and die politically.
There are a lot of folks who are actually mad at President Obama because he actually had the audacity to spend the time to do something fun like fill out a NCAA bracket for ESPN. He went to California to give a couple of speeches and worked out some time to appear with Jay Leno. A lot of people got whacked out of shape over that one. How dare he enjoy himself even a little bit during these parlous times?
What the killjoys don't understand is that we all need breaks from our daily work routine. We also all need praise at times. And, while we may be modest about accepting congratulations for something well done, the fact is we need that input from someone, too. All work and no play (or, to put it another way, all work and no joy) does more than make somebody dull. It makes that person angry and unhappy.
Angry and unhappy people - the folks who are jealous of other people's success or good fortune -- often do irrational things.
It is easy to wish ill on someone else. It takes just a second to do so and, for some people, it seems to be cathartic. (A former colleague once called me up and gave me a profanity-filled tongue-lashing because he thought I had dissed his boss in public. The fact that he was wrong in his assertions is irrelevant in this case. The point was he then called up his old boss and told him he defended him and verbally slayed me. Maybe he felt better about himself for doing this. Maybe he earned a raise for doing so.)
Me? I'd rather be happy for a friend's success. It may not be as therapeutic as yelling at someone or holding a grudge. But I sleep a lot better at night.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment