“There are no facts, only interpretations.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
At the beginning of 2020, I was able to immerse myself in a culture outside of America.
During my time abroad, I learned new mental models that I wish to share with you all today.
For starters, I realized that life is inherently unfair and completely random.
By using simple statistics, we all had a higher chance being born in a third world country than a first world one.
Think about that for a bit.
It’s really a blessing to be born in America, as in terms of probabilities, we should’ve been born in India or China due to their large populations. When comparing the economic, social, and political systems of each nation, I would much rather be born in the United States if I had the choice.
But the thing is: I didn’t have a choice.
I was just born.
All the outcomes in my childhood were completely out of my control, and the same can be said for you as well as everybody else in the world.
After accepting the randomness of my birth, I started to be more grateful for the opportunities in my life–and the more grateful I became, the more my problems began to diminish in importance.
Yeah sure, I may have a hard time adjusting to a different school, but I have a computer and access to the internet.
Most people don’t.
Okay, I may have gotten a bad grade on a test, but I have an abundance of food and shelter.
Most people don’t.
At least I’m fortunate enough to be in college, as 99% of the world can’t say the same.
And I could go on…
Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of problems in my life, as we all do. It’s just a part of our nature to be fixated solely on these problems–hence the term “first world problems”.
There’s a pattern of us living in our own, little bubbles.
This makes sense because we’re social animals, and what this means is that we naturally adapt to the environments we’re in–a necessary behavior to ensure the survival of our early ancestors.
For example, let’s take the bubble of America.
Because we live in a certain geographic region, all aspects of our lives occur within this plot of land. When going about the day, it would be inefficient for us to focus our attention on what’s going on outside of this space when it’s not the environment we’re in. We only have so much mental energy in a given day, so it would be inefficient to fixate on sources that aren’t relevant to our lives. However, there’s only one problem that comes with this fixation.
When we live in a bubble, we begin to assume that everybody else in the world is living in that same bubble–and this couldn’t be more false.
We tend to think that other people have it easier than us and that we’re unfortunate to have the problems that we have.
When we have this victim mindset, we begin to take the things we have for granted by only focusing on what we don’t have. Therefore, many of us continue to be discontent with our lives because we compare ourselves to others. In America, even though our GDP per capita remains high, our mental health epidemic continues to become more apparent.
Why?
Because we’re all comparing ourselves to people in the same bubble as us, ignoring those in other bubbles.
Perhaps you drive a Honda, but the person next door just bought a new Tesla.
Happy with your computer? Too bad, your friend just got the new Macbook Pro.
It’s part of human nature to compare ourselves with those around us, and when we do this, it’s harder for us to be grateful for the things we already have.
Because gratitude is necessary for one’s fulfillment and happiness, the lack of it is the reason why so many people lack these two entities in this era.
Even in my own life, when I achieved a certain goal I set for myself, I still wasn’t satisfied. It was only when I lost the things I had going for myself for when I began to appreciate the value of them.
Thanks to my experience abroad, I discovered the solution to this dilemma: perspective.
Let’s go back to that Honda example.
When living in a wealthy suburb and driving a Honda, you’re going to feel inadequate because of the high presence of luxury vehicles–but say you get out of this bubble. Say you compare your car to cars in an impoverished suburb, where all the cars are old and run down.
Your Honda seems like gold now, no?
Let’s expand even further from this.
Say you get out the bubble of not just your suburb, but your country, and enter the bubble of a third world country–where most people don’t even have a car.
Your Honda is now a diamond…Now notice this.
Nothing happened at all, as you still drive a Honda.
Nothing in your life was physically altered and no action was performed, as the only thing that changed was your perspective. In that you became more aware of what you had not compared to your peers, but to the rest of the world.
You could even substitute “Honda” for any aspect of life that we take for granted: technology, love, security, money, family, opportunity, anything.
It’s important to recognize this: most of the world lives in poverty, and millions–if not billions–of people would kill to live the life that you live and to face the problems that you have.
The scary thing is that our births were completely random.
We could’ve easily been born in an impoverished village, or a tyrannical nation.
We could’ve been born into a brothel, or into a community with constant violence.
We could’ve been born in North Korea, or into an orphanage for abandoned children.
But we weren’t, and that’s why we’re privileged — because other people were and it wasn’t their own doing.
We won the genetic lottery and others didn’t.
That’s the only difference between those living in more fortunate circumstances to those living in more unfortunate circumstances.
We only become aware of this fact when we get out of our bubbles and expand our perspectives to reach a global view rather than a local or national one.
JL