First World Problems

Last night I ordered Dominoes’ pizza, took a bite, and all the cheese came off. All that was left was a slice of tomato dominated disappointment. What’s more, my smart phone has so many features that I have to charge it every day. I realise these are pathetic things to complain about, but I’m struggling to change the fact that a lack of both evenly distributed pizza cheese and constant handheld Internet can really piss me off.

In fact most things that get to me really are quite pitiful. Drinks in Cindies have got so expensive; and I don’t know which of the numerous graduate schemes to go for – thanks to my Cambridge degree.

Welcome to the world of first world problems.

Oh, the extremely relative woes of a first-worlder

Now I’m not saying that all of our student population’s problems are trivial. Whether it’s family problems or break ups, humans around the world – no matter what their economic or social circumstances are – will find themselves in difficult situations.

But unfortunately, the vast majority of things that rile us up are trivial. If we take a step backwards and look at the world relatively, we really don’t have the right to get as frustrated by life as we do.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not going all third world preachy on you here. But the majority of us are a bunch of ungrateful bastards. My day today consisted of reading about famine and the HIV virus, I spent five weeks of the summer working in Uganda with disabled children, but the fact that my laptop isn’t a shiny Macbook is almost certainly my most pressing issue.

I suppose relativity only works to the scale of your immediate surroundings. If we spent our lives surrounded by extreme poverty we (hopefully) wouldn’t want that new pair of Topman jeans quite so desperately. But unfortunately we are surrounded by scarily ambitious, and often painfully privileged middle-class, colleagues and that makes it extremely hard to be satisfied with what we’ve got.

So next time you’re a bit down over something as trivial as not getting your food on time at a restaurant, think of yourself as lucky to have that food in the first place.