"There are always others worse off than you." - How does that starving child in Africa make our own problems any less serious?
by 
PokkiTokki
ANSWERS: 7
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"There are always others worse off than you" The city of San Diego, California had, at last count, 4,400 homeless in the city alone. You don't need to look overseas to see hunger. Look at the elderly that choose between food or medicines. Look at the ones that are unemployed, with no more unemployment that have NO income (me). Starving children in Africa are the last thing I think of when I think of issues. I tend to focus on THIS country, and wish our government would, as well. As far as making your issues better or worse, it doesn't. But it does put them in perspective.
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It doesn't make them less serious. It helps you place most of your troubles in perspective. So many people go overboard in thinking everything is about them and that they are the only ones who suffer, who have problems. So many people in Western countries have problems that stem from their own lack of good judgment or bad choices, but they were choices. People in other countries, even some people in the Western world, have problems that are out of their hands, not of their making. That is what the saying is highlighting.
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it doesn't back in the early 90's I was in a computer store and I actually heard someone tell their child "there are kids in Africa that don't even have harddrives on their computers"
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Taken on the whole, Africa is a roaring cauldron of starvation, where the thin thread between life and death is so close at hand. There are pockets of stability in the north and in the south, but overall it refuses to prosper. Nonetheless, I tend to my own knitting here. If I say an issue is serious, it is so, no matter how grave any other situation may be elsewhere. I cannot look to the affairs of one who will not by any means available look out for himself.
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Personally it helps me realize that a lot of my problems are less of a problem. It gives me perspective. Losing your job....terrible. Losing your child to starvation?....you can get another job....
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Its not that your problems may be less serious but what is your perspective in relation to that starving child in Africa. One of the definitions of perspective is "a true understanding of the relative importance of things". If you are dying of cancer then YES your problems are as serious as that starving child in Africa. BUT if your problems are "oh I can't pay this bill because I blew the money on new shoes or a new car" well then your perspective is a little clouded. I do not know what your problems are but I do know this, we ALL have them. No one is free of life's problems. Some of my biggest problems have been self imposed, some have not. If I am healthy, if my family is healthy, if I can pay my bills and live comfortably and am able to help my friends if they need me then I feel like any other problems that come up are simple in comparison to that innocent child in Africa whose mother doesn't have enough food to feed him. Its all about perspective. :)
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It doesn't. I have said the same thing, but usually to my children when they were whining about something that was only significant to them. Or to someone who was a chronic complainer.
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