My mother always used tell me when I was younger that if I didn’t eat my food, it would get cold and become unappetizing. As a child, I generally ignored this advice. However, a few days ago, I went to Peirce for a late breakfast only to discover that the eggs resting on my plate were ICE COLD. Okay, maybe, not ice cold, but swallowing cold, slimy yolk is unpleasant to say the least. After grumbling about my eggs for about ten minutes, I grumbled some more while I walked to class because I wanted to go back to bed. Then it occurred to me that I have a really bad habit of complaining about what some like to call “first-world problems.” If you’re on a computer reading this, possibly sitting in the library or a lounge or your cozy dorm at Kenyon College, you’re probably at least mildly familiar with this term (if not, you should probably visit Urban Dictionary more often).
First-world problems are those little things we find wrong, when mostly everything in our lives is right. The “long” walk from our dorm to our classrooms at the college we are lucky to attend, our slightly cracked iPhone screens, and our Peirce chicken that is drier than the Sahara Desert …they’re all first-world problems we allow ourselves to complain about, because it’s easy and we’re frustrated and tired and stressed. That’s not to say that cutting your fingers every time you touch your phone and shivering every time you leave your room aren’t unpleasant, they certainly are. People generally do not aspire to be cold or wish for broken cell phones. However, just because something is undesirable does not mean that it is worthy of constant complaints. Whether people are aware of your annoyance with life’s most minute details or not, they probably don’t care to hear about how miserable you are because of the silly little things in life. We’re pretty much all in the same boat: at a beautiful liberal arts college where the shower temperatures are slightly inconsistent, slowly trying to earn our diploma. We’ve probably all struggled with the exact same first-world problems, but that does not make them any more valid or important.
No matter how common it is to complain about the little, annoying things that happen throughout the day, it makes us all sound a little spoiled. It’s hard to say that, at our beautiful college where we are receiving an outstanding education, it’s a real “problem” that we have to walk ten minutes to class or 15 to the KAC. So the next time you whip out your phone to advertise your negative feelings about Peirce rice or the length of Middle Path on Yik Yak, remember how lucky you are to be here. No matter how frustrating those little things are, they’re nothing more than first-world problems.
Image Credit: Vital Farms, YouTube