The Paradox of Problems

Because My Life is Obviously So Difficult

"A pastor I know, who gets a more privileged vista of human suffering than I do, told me she was sick of the phrase “first-world problems” — not just because it delegitimizes the perfectly real problems of those of us lucky enough to have enough to eat and Internet access, but because it denies the same stupid trivial human worries to people who aren’t. Are you not entitled to existential angst or tedium vitae if you live in Chad — must you always nobly suffer traditional third-world problems like malaria and coups d’état? If we’re lucky, we graduate to increasingly complex and better problems, and once all our material needs are satisfied we get to confront the insoluble problem of being a person in the world." Tim Kreider, The Feast of Pain

And isn't he absolutely right?

Let us consider, for a moment, an example completely other to that that Kreider suggests. Consider, perhaps, being an adult looking down on a teenager. I've spoken before on how adults have a tendency to dismiss perfectly legitimate actions on a younger persons behalf because they know that in the grand scheme of things, these actions will be short lived - despite the fact that those things mean a great deal to the person at that time. It's exactly the same with problems.

Whenever a teenager mentions that they feel overburdened with their workload, or that they are struggling to befriend their peers, they do not like their teachers, they have money issues, none of their clothes fit, none of their clothes are deemed "cool"...whatever the problem and whatever the severity is - either to the person in their world, or to the rest of the world - grown ups find it very easy to dismiss this.

And yes, perhaps in the grander scale of life, the problems grown ups have are more difficult. If you're overburdened with your load of homework - well, an adult likely has the twice the amount you have due for a deadline which cannot be compromised. Maybe your peers look down on you - but an adult's life is more difficult because their boss not only treats them like muck, but also has the power to get them fired if they so much as speak out of line.

But, does that make the problems they have any less? If a baby is hungry and crying because of that, we feed it ourselves - we do not leave it and expect it to get its own food. Not so for an adult. If an adult is hungry, then they can either wait, or they are expected to make or pay for their own meal. We do not apply the same rules adults abide to, to babies, and just like that we should not do so to teenagers.

A teenager's problems may seems small in comparison to an adults, but in comparison to their world - a shorter timeframe, a smaller scope - their problems might not only seem bigger, but be much more difficult for them to conquer. It's easy for adults to assume your problems are easy to solve because with their plethora of life experience they have probably faced your problems before, and worked them out. But you are solving them for the first time, and you don't know the ins and outs that you will need to walk to reach the summit.

And just like the way adults assume that a teenager's life is ignorant bliss, so too can life be difficult for those who live in relative comfort. That doesn't mean she shouldn't feel a thousand times grateful for everything we have that most do not - but it does mean that the next time someone tells you that what you feel and the problems you have don't matter - because theirs or someone else's are greater...then you have my permission to read them this blog post aloud (and do a sassy "Z" clicky thing that I don't know the name of.)

Bella