I always enjoy listening to the “Hidden Brain” program on NPR.

My own brain often seems to play hide-and-go-seek, sometimes for hours,

and you do see so many folks in the news,

who might qualify for their own challenging treasure hunt “The Really Well-Hidden Brain.”

The last program I heard, was about “Envy, and it’s nasty cousin schadenfreude” (= taking pleasure in the troubles of others).

And the host, Shankar Vedantum, mentioned that while we have terms like envy, jealousy, etc.

we really don’t have a word for “taking pleasure in others’ success.”

Say no more!  I’ve got just the thing.

I cannot take credit, the coinage comes from my mom.

Upon hearing about this Hidden Brain topic, she created some new words, in two seconds flat:

Empathy + Celebrate = Empacelebrate

Empathy + Enthusiasm = Empathusiasm.

(They sound better than they look, just say them out loud.)

ex. “Let’s empacelebrate our friends’ success!”

If you cannot bring yourself to do this, totally lacking in empathy, then you’re an empanada.

OK, I thought that last one sounded familiar, I just remembered, it was one of my favorite things to eat in Chile.

So we’ll keep working on that one, but I really like the other two.