Gen Z learning to climb and they will overcome

Youths during Gen Z protests in Nairobi. [File, Standard]

A recent Standard headline painted the real picture of a nation that smiles when others mourn and laughs when the leading class sob. The English language, with all its opulence, lacked an exact word that they had to borrow from the Germans and the Greeks. Even our local languages have no such word, because our society has never been this cruel.

The word schadenfreude originates from the German lexicon, a compound of Schaden (harm) and Freude (joy). It is that happiness that creeps upon the human heart at the sight of another's pain. Even more obscure, though older, is epicaricacy, a Greek relic meaning of the same meaning.