People like to brag about their troubles. One person mentions how their life has been difficult, and I know first-hand that there will always be someone else who will say "Oh yeah? Well I've got you beat." You had emotionally abusive parents? Well he or she had emotionally and physically abusive parents. Your job had a cruel boss? Well he or she was in the military and had to go through a drill sergeant. You don't deserve to be sad with your life problems because there's someone else in America who is unemployed, yet they don't deserve to be sad because there are probably people in China who have things even worse. Not even sweatshop workers deserve to be sad, however, because Holocaust survivors trump them all.
So nobody sympathizes with one another because everybody thinks that his or her problems are or were worse. People with seemingly lesser problems don't know what they have and they should be grateful. On top of that, they should spend more time sympathizing with those who have bigger, i.e. more dramatic, problems.
That doesn't work. It creates a selfish world. It should matter how extreme someone's sadness is. What should matter is that they're sad. Sad is sad is sad. It shouldn't matter how sad you are compared to someone else; that's a different reality. The point is, either way, that you're not happy. What gives anyone the authority to tell someone else that they don't have the right to be sad? Everyone has the right to be sad when bad things happen. I don't praise depression and angst, but isn't it a good thing that humans can feel solemn when anything, even something fairly minor, is wrong with the world?
So maybe instead of caring about ourselves and our own sadness, we should for once stand with each other. I have reasons to be sad and consider my life a struggle. For different reasons, someone else can say the same thing for herself. With that as a common bond, shouldn't it be a reason for us to come together? Then united we can hope, united we can dream, and some day in our perfect unity we will discover love.
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