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Jason Allatt, Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

There’s a funny catch-22 with the idea of “first-world problems.” As someone who has only ever lived in the First World, to me, they’re just problems. To clarify, I don’t mean the line at Starbucks, I don’t mean Chick-fil-A is out of sandwiches. When I think of a “first-world problem,” what weighs on me is the feeling that I’ve already won life in a lot of ways.

The lottery of being born in Canada is a hell of a big win: I don’t want for food or water, I have a place to live that’s mine and people I love around me. Despite this massive win in the lottery of life, it doesn’t seem to make me happy. The simultaneous feeling of being thankful for where I was born, yet feeling guilty for not being 100% happy 100% of the time is a real phenomenon of mental health.

The struggle with mental health and wanting to better oneself is always seen through the lens of what we know. Doing better than yesterday means improving on a life that, to many, is already beyond a dream. Even as I write this, the voice at the back of my head starts gnawing away at me. How absolutely pathetic I am, to be feeling sad or depressed. For what? There’s no war outside my door, I don’t fear for my life. So why do I wake up and need three little white pills to feel like I deserve to live?

To take it a step further, I’m white. No one has ever looked at me and assumed the worst. Every institution was built by and for people who look like me, and I actively benefit from them. I’m not an activist, I don’t fight for change. How absolutely pathetic am I to complain about “the system” we live in while doing nothing but benefiting from it?

To this horrible and self-destructive part of my brain, which at every turn seeks to tear me down, I have one word of protection: empathy. If there is a bare minimum I can do, it’s care. It’s to keep informed of all the horrible things that go on in the world, recognize self-destructive thoughts and remind myself to be thankful of how lucky I am for the life I was born into. Maybe feeling guilty for that unearned happiness is better than looking down on people and being angry that they can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Anger is never a good emotion, but dissipating it through my own reflection is better than spewing it out into the world. It’s better than hating people. I can be better than the immature, jaded and barely concealed racism/sexism/homophobia of the people I spent many years being forced to be around. Cultivating empathy outside exactly what you know and exactly what you’ve been exposed to is maybe the best thing I’ve done to alleviate the self-destructive “poor me” spiral of thinking.

Don’t look down on people for their own struggles. Don’t throw your hands up and refuse to understand why people are upset when they (like me) were born in a place that gives them amazing advantages compared to other parts of the world. Don’t be part of the sad and seemingly growing divide in society. There are millions of people who started life seemingly having won the same lottery as me, only to have the world (especially recently) seem to tell them that they are not worthy of it, their struggle isn’t valid and their identity should be rejected or not even exist, a whole swath of society throwing their hands up and giving up on people simply because they are not 100% thankful or 100% happy, 100% of the time.

My voice probably means nothing, but if it can be heard at all, I would say this: be thankful for the things you couldn’t control that worked out in your favour, and don’t ever accept that those things are enough. Challenge the things that fight to repress you, find the voices that will speak with you, be proud of what you work for and be thankful you’re strong enough to do it. Don’t ever let yourself be cut down by the idea that it could always be worse and for many it is. And try to be happy, despite how much your brain may conspire to make that not the case. 

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