At Least You're Not In Gaza
Why first world problems are still problems.
You can have thought-provoking conversations at a supermarket freezer. Husband and I found ourselves chatting to a neighbour over frozen peas.
‘Isn’t it awful what’s happening in Gaza?’ said the neighbour. ‘Put your own problems in perspective, wouldn’t it?’
‘No,’ I said.
The neighbour did that thing people do when they disapprove of what you’ve said. Pretend they haven’t heard you and change the subject.
At the time I was in a fallow period with work and I was fretting about it. As a problem, it was nowhere near the scale of Gaza. But it was still a problem.
After I broke my leg, I went away with my walking club for a weekend in Kerry. Naturally, I wasn’t walking. As I propped my busted leg up on a low bar stool one of the walkers asked how the accident had happened.
‘Skiing,’ I said.
‘That’s definitely a first world problem,’ said the walker.
Yes, a first world problem that required me to have an operation, to stay in a hospital in another country and to attend a physio for many weeks. In other words, still a problem.
At the time of writing this, we’re enjoying splendid weather, and some people believe the sun has such magical powers that it can melt away problems.
‘Cheer up,’ I overheard a mother say to her daughter as they walked along the road. ‘Haven’t we a grand bit of blue sky.
Photo Description: Picture of the sun, which some people believe is the solution to all problems.
We had, but the daughter also had a baby who was grizzling. The raising of small children can be a daily soul-sap, if not balanced by the promise of good things to come. A fact beautifully illustrated by the psychologist Maureen Gaffney in her book Flourishing, which offers antidotes to overthinkers.
During my weekly coffee date with my friend and her mother, the mother talked about her granddaughter who had broken her ankle.
‘Do you know, she’s had a smile on her face the whole time,’ she remarked in admiration. ‘And I wouldn’t mind, but her sister has a face on her like thunder, and she’s no broken ankle.’
True that, but she might have problems that will linger long after her sister’s broken ankle has healed.
We talk a good talk about mental health, but then when people actually share their problems, we treat the problems as a sort of competition where they must reach a certain threshold of seriousness in order to be valid.
Yes, our problems are nothing compared to what people in warzones are facing, but they’re problems in their own right. When you tell people, ‘At least you’re not in Gaza,’ or ‘Cheer up the sun is shining,’ you’re telling people what to feel. How is that meant to promote mental health.
Some will say I’m looking for licence to whinge. And it’s true that my current batch of problems are nothing that a good kick up the behind wouldn’t cure. Luckily, I’m double jointed, so I can kick my own behind. I don’t need anyone else to do it for me.
Now when there’s not enough froth on my cappuccino… that’s a first world problem.