Schadenfreude

Wikipedia defn: pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.
Urban Dictionary Defn: Watching a vegetarian being told she just ate chicken 











There’s something quite amusing about watching a great person fall.
It’s tragic, it’s humbling but it’s also probably the one thing that will leave you feeling better about your own life than anything else.

Recently the press ran the story of Ben Mwine, a Watoto stalwart who has done his service to that ministry of English Speaking cell based parts of the body of Christ. The story wasn't of the countless souls that probably found comfort through the music the station he used to run. It wasn't about finding out he has managed to carve out a living in an industry that is pretty much dead or dying .

No it was about his 'mistake'. The mistake of having a child before saying his" I Do’s" in front of a packed house of friends and family. A mistake that would require him to make a public confession and appear humbled and ready to atone for his awful, awful crime.

Worse yet; He isn't even dating the mother of his child. The monster!!

For a  moment after learning of all this, I made that teeth kissing sound we Africans are so good at doing when we know words just won’t suffice. Then I suddenly felt amusement. The stories begun to fly about listing all the so called men and women of God that have missed the mark and almost all of them had to do with sexual misconduct. ^Footnote on how it’s worse to have sex in the church than anything else

It’s just a matter of time before someone disappoints you. We all know this. From the first time you realize your dad is not the strongest man alive, and that the rolex guy in Wandegeya makes better chapatti than your mum will ever make, we all realize that our idealized perceptions of people are often going to be adjusted downward. We rarely rue these moments in people that we care about.

Which is what started to worry me.

When people heard about Ruyonga having a child out of wedlock(You can read his thoughts here )the immediate reaction was not just disappointment, but a sort of pleasure at seeing someone taken down a peg. Someone who talks righteousness and encourages people to live a upright life, which according to their faith, means not having sex before making a commitment and signing a contract.

As a person who is not religious, it could be so easy to just chalk this up as something to be used as an example that Christians are hypocritical and that this somehow discredits these men. To mock or to take pot shots at them.

But all I can say is that I pity us mostly for enjoying watching someone struggle. As if in subconscious way it makes us better off. It’s an illegitimate good feeling watch someone fail. You don’t do anything but watch them go down a few pegs and feel great. This reminded me of a greta quite from the world's greatest basket ball player and receding hairline champion Lebron James. After losing in Game 6 of the NBA finals in 2010, Lebron was asked to respond about all the joy people seemed to gain from watching his team lose:

..  all the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today," James said. "They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that.

"They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they have to get back to the real world at some point.""

In a nutshell, Lebron summed up something we all need to remember: Tearing others down will never lift us up. It just makes us less humane to each other.

We don’t have to excuse behavior we find distasteful (For what it’s worth, I see nothing wrong with what these men have done and it’s certainly none of our business what happens in their private lives), but let’s have some level of perspective.

To parade someone in front of a church and ask him to apologize because he fathered a child and is not going to marry the mother is ludicrous. What business is it of ours? Didn't Jesus make famous something about people without sin casting stones?

My admiration goes to Ruyonga especially for his well-written response to the murmurs. I feel it's necessary for a young man with natural urges to apologize for having done the natural (But then given that he preaches abstinence,  perhaps he felt he had to). I sincerely hope no one will ever use the B word to refer to his or Ben Mwine’s child. That one must apologize for bringing life into this world is absolutely fucking insane.

There may be something amusing and even secretly exciting about watching someone fall, but remember it doesn't make you any better of a person, if anything, it makes you that much less of a decent human being.