Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
First world problems
Every once in a while, probably more often than it should happen, I get caught up in a struggle that has nothing to do with real life. In real life, I know that I am privileged, and secure, and that all my basic needs (and beyond) are being met. When I forget this essential thought I become engrossed in what can only be a spoiled person’s issue.
Take a banana, for example. I will only eat it at a certain point in its development. Too many brown spots – no thanks. Too green – no thanks. There is a certain point in a banana’s existence when it is perfect, when it is tasty and not mealy. That’s what I’m going for. But bananas have one annoying feature and that is banana strings. I get irritated when I’m peeling the fruit and those stringy things stick to the part I want to eat. I’ve tried to be Zen about this and understand that every part of the fruit has a purpose. I just don’t get the strings’ reason for being. (By the way, a banana is considered to be a berry.)
When I find myself in this predicament with my daily banana I sometimes come down to earth and feel gratitude that I have one to eat at all. Bananas are produced in areas where millions of people don’t have access to enough food. The largest producer is India, where nearly 15% of its 1.3 billion people are undernourished. Widespread poverty is a primary cause: one article says that 20% of the population lives on less than $1.25 per day. The subsistence on pennies a day is a cruel fact of life in India.
Here in the US of A, we have our own poverty problem, despite being among the richest countries in the world. Over 37 million people live below what has been established as “the poverty line”. Each year the government puts out a table by which poverty is measured. Recently, a person who makes less than $13,500 is considered poor. This means that millions of children in our cities and rural areas live each day with food insecurity.
But, back to First World Problems. I experienced another one last week when the remote for my television was on the fritz. I was so annoyed that I had to call Spectrum and have them walk me through how to fix my dilemma. For almost an hour I couldn’t watch my programs on my big-ass television set. How awful is that? When the remote was healed I quickly went back to watching some lightweight holiday movie and was quite content to do so. And, don’t let my phone battery get below 50% or I’m frantically looking for the misplaced charger. Or, Dierbergs stopped carrying my favorite ginger snap cookies and I felt the need to report my displeasure to the manager.
I know I’m not alone in experiencing First World Problems. A little research on the term itself taught me that in November of 2012 the phrase was added to the Oxford Dictionary Online, but that it first appeared in 1979 in a work of nonfiction by G. K. Payne. There’s a fact for your next Trivial Pursuit night! In fact, when I am complaining about a First World Problem I need to be reminded that this is the utmost in a trivial pursuit existence.