My First World Problems

Two days ago I was pumped up and primed to tell you all about Day 2 of the February Bread Challenge, and how hard it was for me because I was, as usual, overthinking everything and just couldn't figure out who would be best to give that day's bread to. But these tribulations are a story for another day. So there I am, logging onto my year-and-a-half-old iMac, and it keeps rejecting my password. A few restarts later, it became clear something was very wrong. Trying to get the computer working again has eaten up a bunch of time over the past couple of days and it still isn't working; even if it does start to work, there may be damage to the hard drive (the desk-ish thing we bought at IKEA to house the computer may not have allowed for enough ventilation, and we may have fried the hard drive). Plus, although we had backups of most of the stuff on it, there may be some very old things that weren't backed up, but we aren't really sure. You know, it's been a pain.

When you start a blog, (and when I say "you," of course, I mean, "I") you are putting yourself out there, open to criticism and distain from, well, anyone around the world who has access to the Internet. You start to imagine who might read what you say, and how someone in a different situation than yours might judge you, say, for writing about trivial matters while people are starving.

I don't know if it was this vulnerability to judgement that got me thinking about First World Problems --problems you have to live in a rich country to even imagine-- or if it was an article called "Half the world's richest 1% live in the United States" that my cousin-in-law, who works for the World Bank, posted on Facebook. Here is a quote that has been sticking with me:

In the grand scheme of things, even the poorest 5% of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world.

I do not post this to trivialize the very real problems of Americans living in poverty. But wow. That is really saying something almost incomprehensible about 2/3 of the people in the world.

As always, The Onion really gets to the crux of the matter in this Point/Counterpoint, although once you get to the second half the humor really drains away.

The problem of the IKEA desk with poor ventilation is, of course, a First World Problem. As my husband put it, I have it so hard because one of the 3 computers in the house may have died (here I  disclaim: "the other 2 computers are old and we don't really use them anymore; I don't want you to get the impression that we use 3 computers in our house! I mean, unless someone in visiting, and my husband brings his work laptop home...") and the iPhone and 2 iPods ("one of those we got free when we bought our iMac!" I protest; "good heavens, it's not like we BOUGHT 2 iPods!"), are so hard to type on, how will I ever post to my blog?

And pretty much all of the problems I have addressed on this blog are First World Problems. "Oh, I have SO MANY CLOTHES in my closet, it just makes me feel like I  have NOTHING!" "Oh, I own 2 houses (disclaimer: not outright; we have mortgages), if only I could just SELL one and be DONE with it!" "Oh, I have to CHOOSE which TV to buy but there are TOO MANY OPTIONS!" "Oh, I have SO MUCH BREAD! How will I EVER give it all away!" Please. It's disgraceful.

But is it really simply that I'm a selfish boor? I think it's maybe part of human nature. From the Wikipedia entry for hedonic treadmill:

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.^[1] According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness. 

So maybe it's not our fault, per se, that we think Cracker Barrel running out of Chicken and Rice on a Saturday night is a major problem. Maybe we in the first world are no shallower than those in the world who have, literally, nothing. Just a whole lot luckier to live where we live.

And now, if you feel like you need to assuage some First World Guilt, here's a link to Heifer International.