I have just learned that my good friend Tony 'The Chairman' had a precisely similar experience to myself when re-entering the country last weekend through the same airport that I vilified a few posts ago. The same seething mob of bewildered passengers, the same incompetent and unconcerned immigration officials, the same excruciating 2-hr wait.
I feel oddly uplifted by this news. It's not schadenfreude (though that is a fine word and a very useful concept); I take no delight in my friend's distress, even in the relatively non-malevolent form of consolation-by-comparison (viewing my own troubles as less when set alongside his), and certainly not in the sense of sadistic glee. And yet I do feel comforted in a way, my sense of grievance salved; yes, I admit it, my occasional paranoia is assuaged. "Why seems it so particular with thee?" "I know not 'seems'!" When shit like that happens, I do take it personally: I convince myself that the unseen directing forces of the Universe are singling me out for special attention. It's good to be reminded that other people are experiencing identical shit.
I would like to find a word for this undercutting of self-pity and the diminution of paranoia that arises from the reflection that our sufferings are commonplace after all. What could that word be?
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