Somewhere out there, in the giant throbbing biomass that is the human race, someone has it worse than you. Objectively, someone has more negative phenomena affecting them than you do. It's the nature of existence; as long as there is at least two people alive, there will be pissing contests. Now, you'd think the fact that you're doing better than some other people would be an incredible pick me up. Life isn't so bad, just look at that guy! He sucks. Unfortunately, some of us have brains that just aren't helpful to the "feeling good about life" cause and want to turn positives into negatives, so in the spirit of over-sharing on the internet, here is a list of reasons why not being the least fortunate man on the planet makes me feel terrible.
1) The suffering of others makes me sad. I know I've opened with a very lame sentiment, but to be fair, if you aren't at least a little upset that other people are suffering, I envy you. I wish I could not give a shit like that.
2) I'm not doing better than others by any work of my own. I'm a white male from a middle-class family in a first world country. By default, I'm doing better than billions of people. As such, the fact that I'm not the least fortunate person on the planet doesn't feel like a miracle I should be eternally thankful for, it just seems statistically likely.
3) The quality of life I enjoy should bring me a lot of happiness, but because it's been ever-present for my entire life, the fact that it continues to be doesn't actually do anything to change my mood if I happen to feel crappy. The idea of thinking to myself, "oh, I shouldn't be bummed, I have running water!" just seems asinine to me, because I managed to go from feeling good to feeling bad without the running water ever doing anything different. I know I should derive some degree of happiness and satisfaction from
the relative comfort of my life, but that doesn't actually make me feel
any different, which makes my sadnesses and frustrations seem
unjustified and out of my control, which feeds itself.
4) Sadness, difficulty, frustration and hopelessness aren't objective, so
even if someone does have more difficult circumstances than I do,
there's no metric to compare how they feel to how I feel, so it's
distinctly possible I feel worse than them, which is again totally
unjustified.
5) Their suffering might not be their fault and they may lack the
necessary tools to alleviate their suffering, which reminds me how much
I take for granted just how many tools I have to alleviate their own.
I realise just how easy it is to look at this list and say "this is completely selfish and trivializes the very serious suffering of others," but look at number 3. I know this. I know that navel gazing and beating yourself up because you're beating yourself up is stupid, but I also know that even if no-one else knows exactly how you feel, you'll still feel the same, and if you feel shitty, you're gonna feel shitty. It surprises me that society is not more open about emotions in general; we all have them and we all know just how much they can affect you, but yet, we rarely (if ever) talk about or acknowledge them. And doesn't that just make you sad?
No comments:
Post a Comment