I often wonder if everyone’s lives were planned out for them from birth, were we put on earth to live out a different life than anyone else, with each individual person alive either surviving different situations, believing different things, or approaching life in a slightly different way to even the most similar of people.
Were some of us born to take part in various tests of fate in a big scheme to see exactly how strong a human being is, mentally, emotionally and physically.
For those that are given a challenge and chosen subconsciously to accept it, if it is a test passed then we will be rewarded in some unknown form, but if we fail....?
Maybe we live out the rest of our lives in boredom, continuing through it like a path with only one ending and no options or new routes along the way.
Similar to groundhog day; you go to school, you leave school, get a mundane job, you meet someone, get married, have kids, continue to live together in the same mundane way with a few hiccups along the way as necessary entertainment, you go on a few holidays, have grandkids, then you die. Boring right?
But on the other hand you could be faced with the most harshest of misfortunes but for successfully making it through them in one piece (or thereabouts) you are rewarded by the most amazing experiences that someone given the ‘mundane’ life option will never participate in.
Given the choice what would you choose?
I feel I was blessed with the latter, I sometimes feel that no one I know has ever been through the heart retching events that I have. Even my own sister who has basically lived my life alongside me and been directly affected by the vast majority of awful things that have happened, but been dealt with a different role to play in the drama which wasn’t so harsh, nevertheless far from pleasant.
My perspective on this changes and takes many forms of emotions in viewing the statement that seems to portray such a terrible life, as in one form I say to myself “how can you say that! look at the harrowing stories of people living in third world countries with no food, riffled with disease and suffering, or the soldiers at war seeing sights that no human unless completely dysfunctional, could ever forget or let affect them in someway or another”.
However on the other hand, as I say to people when giving advise, it doesn’t matter how small you think your problem is in comparison to others, if it is affecting you enough provoke negative emotions then it is just as big a problem as anyone else’s.
In reflection each time I say that I suppose I am being hypocritical in accordance with my not so distant statement in which I sometimes feel that no one I know has ever been through the suffering that I have.
Nevertheless my intentions are always good when listening to peoples worries and that is the main thing. That’s not to say that in some cases I really can’t be arsed to listen to moaning or whining about some trivial matter that is seriously not in the very least life threatening or mildly unsolvable.
To those people that pose those topics of concern to me, I tend to brush them off and offer the simplest of shortened advise (as this is all that is necessary) to avoid me saying what I really think.
Which is generally something along the lines of “go and find a real problem that I don’t deal with on a daily basis without even taking a second to console myself over, for which is so low on my list of priority worries that even the middle listed worries would laugh at it if it tried to creep into the forefront of my mind in line for sympathy”.... harsh...? Maybe....
But is there some way of defining what is a serious concern or worry, that should be ranked higher than all others?
Maybe a universal hierarchal scale should be drawn up listing the main topics such as death, illness, job, money, relationships etc which is then broken down into the subtopics that are derived from them such as death of an immediate family member, close family member, family member that you knew, family member you didn’t really like etc.
Once a cause for unhappyiness has been agreed on you can then move onto where in the grand scale of ethics this particular concern falls and to what degree it should affect you or in effect how bad it actually is in the grand scheme of things.
In fairness, I’m not sure what this would actually achieve but sometimes when I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself I wish others could see why I feel like this in comparision to the lives of others around me.
Maybe if there were a point scheme attached to the misfortune scale idea then we could tot up the ongoing score and simple state this number as a way of explaining our fluctuating mood “What’s wrong with you?!” you respond “Look, I’m a 76.8, I don’t wanna talk about it” then sympathetically reply “Ahhh wow, I’m so sorry, I’m a 32.5 so I can’t imagine what your going through”... end of conversation... no need for explanation.
That innovative concept could be seen as an attention seeking cry for some kind of appreciation and awareness of a person that wants everyone to just plainly feel sorry for them... but its not... promise!
In all honesty its not a case of wanting people to feel sorry for you, its almost a yearning for recognition of the difficulties or hurdles that you have defeated in order to be at this place, at this time as oppose to the ever reckoning fate of a selfish type of death which is constantly buried (sometimes not that deep) in the back of your mind calling you and reminding you that the option is there as an easy way out when things get tough.
