Artists and the End of Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others, especially those we see as rivals. We feel it when a rival's book deal or gallery show gets drenched in flop sweat because artmaking is a jungle, right? There just aren't enough rewards to go around for everyone and fail-danger waits under every vine. It doesn't have to be. Why can't the success of others make the jungle floor more fertile for all of us, i.e. if we're willing to do the work? Resentment for other's achievement is an act of self-vandalism. It's leeches the precious energy we need to make our own work.

Nature isn't deathly competition but cooperation for the mutual benefit.

And taken a step farther––and at the risk of sounding like Seth Godin––once we understand we exist in cooperation and not as rivals, then maybe we can see our work as the gift it is and should be:

The question is not what can I get from the world, but what can I share with the world that's emerging.

In harsher academic terms:

If a society... strongly identifies with... achievement, resentments will be seen for what they are––the complaints of undisciplined failures...  

Achievers do not act out of a sense of guilt or obligation; they are driven onward by a sense of abundant, overflowing life. They create not merely because they desire to enjoy the fruits of their labor––which they do––but because of an inner fire urging them onward... Every achiever makes a contribution, large or small, to the continuation and advance of civilization. 

Robert Sheaffer

Your good art will do no less than advance civilization. How about that? So then, what're you waiting for? Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. (Picasso––easy for him to say, huh?) Don't go to bed until you've written a paragraph or drawn a sketch or made some music, crafted or concepted, etc, for the world needs you.

The opposite of schadenfreude is mitgefühl. Practice more mindful mitgefühl.