Small Problems

I have trouble sympathizing with my friends and family who have ‘small simple problems.’

In the midst of getting a flurry of text about one friend’s bridal shower I was also receiving texts from another friend who is being tested for cancer.  It’s hard not to compare the two.  I place judgment or value on each crisis. Cancer is a real crisis….having to throw a party for a friend who is throwing herself a wedding, not a real crisis.   

            In my head I know that each person has a different normal and when things divert from normal it is a crisis for them.  But, my reaction is to roll my eyes at brides and pray for my friend to please not have cancer.

            In vain hope, I pray as you read this, you might think, of course one is more important than the other!

            Those of us who have been to hell and back can sometimes become callous to others’ problems; because we judge that we have been through far worse. As a chaplain I hold hands of people who are dying and comforting the families who lose them.  I, with incurable disease and chronic pain… I become callus.  I become unfeeling to the rest of the world that have issue I deem smaller than mine.

 I view the world through “first world problem meme” goggles.

            Though I feel justifiably right judging others problems, this attitude will not serve my relationships.  I truly believe that “comparison in the thief of joy” (Theodore Roosevelt)

            If I want to be there for all my dear friends, I have to unroll my eyes and listen to their pain.  As I write this I also think this is a balancing act and that SOMETIMES people need to be told, ‘some people wish their problems were as small as yours!’

            I remember once, when I was in a pit of pain and depression I was on my way to see a friend who was graciously willing to hear me cry and talk.  In the dark of that winter’s night when I pulled out of the driveway I saw a homeless man looking through my garbage. 

I felt like garbage.  I felt like my problems seem so small compared to this man who is looking for something to eat. My friend reassured me that I can have compassion for the homeless man and still be in my own pain.

Pain is pain is pain. 

Pain cannot be shared, only felt.

In spite of my own pain I can still listen to yours.