I have a first world problem. You know what I mean. Stuff like "my air conditioning is too cold" "I have too much food in the fridge and none of it sounds good but I don't want to drive somewhere" "I'm not sure which of the 1800 churches within ten miles of my house I want to attend this weekend." Stuff like that.
I feel guilty I guess. I mean, my problem is huge to me, but to the orphans in Swaziland, the starving in Haiti, hell, to the guy down the street that has lost his job and with it, everything he thought his life was about - my problem is laughable. Stupid even. But to me, it's everything.
When a good friend of mine was dying from cancer, I went to visit him. To just say hello. He asked how I was and how I'd been. We hadn't seen each other in a few weeks. Mostly because I knew he was dying and I didn't know what to say. I told him that I'd been pretty sick and I'd had my gall bladder taken out. He was actually really mad at me for not telling him. He said that he'd had no idea I'd been sick and he was sorry that I needed surgery and that he really hoped that I felt better. I said something like, "Well, I figured with everything that you're going through, I felt dumb complaining about laproscopic surgery." He said, "That's the worst part of having cancer. Everyone thinks that what they're going through doesn't matter, because they think I have it so much worse. I still care about my friends and what I'm going through doesn't make what you're going through matter less."
We all have our own first world problems. They are very real to us and shouldn't be discounted just because someone has it worse off than we do. I'm not saying that we should ignore real issues. I think everyone that can should help those that are less fortunate. I hate that phrase by the way "less fortunate." I think it's all a matter of perspective. I don't think someone born "poor" by American standards is less fortunate. I don't think people that live in poverty even are necessarily less fortunate. We look at life through the world's eyes and we see people without color TV, without cell phones, without the internet, as less fortunate. We see people living in huts with no electricity as less fortunate. But I see us as the less fortunate ones. We who sit in our air conditioned houses. We who are connected twenty four hours a day. We who don't know what it means to live with out the distractions of television and radio and internet. We don't know how to work for what we need, so we work for what we want and we become slaves to ourselves. Always wanting more, better, bigger, shinier. More. Always a slave to more.
We are the ones that are missing out.
My first world problem? I have too much. I want too much.
I can't tell you the last time I actually needed something.
I've been pretty close with death over the last few years. I spent a lot of time with my mom while she battled cancer. Something that struck me while sitting with her for all those days was that all of the things that she "loved" before she got sick, didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter to her what was going on with her favorite TV shows, she didn't think about the books she'd read or wanted to read. The pictures and knick-knacks that she'd accumulated over the years sat forgotten at home. Everything that she'd spent her life buying or wanting to buy, was less than nothing to her. What mattered was that she was sick, she wanted medicine to make the pain stop. She wanted to drink water to wet her always dry mouth. She wanted to sleep and to know that I would be there if she woke up in the night.
Now, I'm watching my father die as well. I ask him every time I see him if he needs anything, if he wants anything from the house. He always says, "not that I can think of." He doesn't need the pictures, the towels that he and mom bought when they bought their first house. He doesn't think about the kitchen table that they've had for forty years. Doesn't care about the carpet that he and mom fought over and was so important at the time. He doesn't miss his big flat screen TV, his favorite rocking chair, or his wool blanket from the Navy. He doesn't care that he hasn't had a cup of coffee in months and he also doesn't care that he hasn't smoked a cigarette in over three weeks now. He does care that he'd like a drink of water but has a hard time sucking hard enough to get the water through the straw. He cares that when he's alone, he's afraid, but he's not sure what he's afraid of. He knows that he's dying and he wonders what that is going to be like. But he doesn't care about anything that made the world call him "fortunate".
My first world problem? Is mine alone. It's huge to me and I'm not sure how to fix it. But, it's a first world problem that I created on my own. I created it because I don't need anything, I don't know how to need anything. I only know how to want. But I do know this. I don't want to wait until I'm facing my own death to discover what I really need. I don't want to wait until it's too late to understand that giving in to my "wants" has created nothing but first world problems.
Today, I choose to live with a grateful heart, a heart that needs, and heart that does not want.
