First World Problems

Over Christmas I was grumbling to myself about not having enough space in my fridge for all the food we had. As I honed my Tetris skills trying to find places for all of it to go and still be able to shut the door without food falling out, I realized I needed a much bigger fridge. Ironically, I have also complained at times that the fridge is too big - we are prone to losing things in it and finding them months later having evolved into life forms too awful to talk about.

Sometimes it's helpful to say these things out loud, so you can hear how ridiculous you're being.

"my fridge is too big" or "I have too much food".

Try saying these things out loud while watching a news report about people fleeing their country and living in refugee camps.

When I'm actually paying attention to the absurdity of my complaints, I'm convicted by how ungrateful I am and how entitled I seem about my life.

Sometimes we use the label "first-world problems" to describe the kinds of ridiculous things many of us get upset about.

Rohinton Mistry, in his astounding tale of life and suffering in India entitled, A Fine Balance, captures it well in this little dialogue:

“I've done lots of jobs. Right now, I'm a hair collector."
"That's good", said Ishvar tentatively. "What do you have to do as a hair-collector?"
"Collect hair."
"And there is money in that?"
"Oh very big business. There is a great demand for hair in foreign countries."
"What do they do with it? Asked Om skeptical." 
"Many different things. Mostly they wear it. Sometimes they paint it in different colors - red, yellow, brown, blue. Foreign women enjoy wearing other people's hair. Men also, especially if they are bald.  
In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.” 

Fearing baldness - a "first-world problem" indeed.

It's rare that a line I read in a book sticks with me for years, but that idea about us being so rich we can afford to fear silly things has stayed with me, perhaps one could even say haunted me.

So let me continue to own this (although I know I'm not alone): at times I complain about things of insignificance and even believe I am truly suffering over them.

I close my eyes to the images in the news, and block out my memories of what I saw in the developing world so that I can ignore the kinds of suffering that go on for two-thirds of the world's inhabitants. To be perfectly honest, sometimes I don't really want perspective on my problems - I'd rather complain and feel justified in doing it. I don't think many of us want to perceive ourselves as privileged or even unfairly blessed.

But as I recognize my kinship with all of humanity I'm forced to consider the fact that I might be like Cinderella's older step-sisters - complaining about my dress to wear to the ball while someone else in my family is doing hard labour.

A friend of mine forbids her kids to use the phrase "I'm starving" because she feels it disrespects the suffering of people who are actually starving around the world. It's probably the least we can do.

But here's the other side of the coin with "first world problems"....

...sometimes they do represent true suffering, and we are foolish to quickly dismiss them merely because they do not appear to have the gravity of physical deprivation that much of the world suffers.  I would even argue that when we ignore those true instances of suffering by labeling them as insignificant first world problems, we do a harm not only to ourselves, but to those in developing countries.

Is baldness truly a form of suffering? Obviously not. But it's not just about hair is it? Many people fear baldness because they fear being isolated, rejected, even being unloveable. Our vanity in wealthy nations is so often a product of deeper fears: symbolic, rather than literal dangers. As Mistry points out in this passage, wealth means we can afford to be afraid of silly things.

However, our wealth also creates some of the conditions that make us vulnerable to these symbolic fears in the first place.

We fear abandonment and isolation based on loss of sex appeal because social bonds are weak in countries like ours where individualism has become a dominant ideology. Where families and tribes are no longer the chief organizing principle of social arrangements, connection is now based on the ability to attract social bonds, rather than on the basis of birth into a particular group.

I have no interest in defending my absurd complaints about having too much food in my house. But my contradictory complaints (fridge too small and too big) are a symptom of bigger problems - problems that shouldn't be ignored but rather magnified and addressed. And when we minimize the cultural sickness of living in North American society, we overlook the brokenness of our cultures and remain wounded in ways that I think actually perpetuates our mistreatment of the developing world. If we constantly de-legitimize the problems of loneliness, consumerism, individualism, and lives controlled by technology, because they don't seem as devastating as human-trafficking or lack of access to clean water, we run the risk of missing how wealth and overabundance create their own forms of suffering and brokenness.

I appreciate that we must be careful not to enter into pity for ourselves and equate our suffering with many of those in the developing world. The truth is, suffering cannot be compared. But to write off the problems associated with over-abundance entirely because they're not devastating to human life in the same ways, is also a problem. I think it's a mistake to focus exclusively on the starvation of some in our human family, while ignoring the spiritual illness of our own gluttony.

I do think it's high time we looked carefully at how our overabundance is shaping us and harming us. Not so that we can ignore the problems of those in poverty or make ourselves feel less guilty about our participation in their repression, but so that we can pursue our own healing and restoration for the good of the world. Sometimes we have to fix what's broken in ourselves before we can offer help to others. But before we can fix it, we have to acknowledge that the values and systems we participate in that cause such inequality, are also harming ourselves.