You’re only ___, you’re too young to have real problems.
You have everything, what could you possibly have to be upset about?
To address that first line the article below is about a
9-year-old who hung himself. He was being bullied at school and felt it drained
his life of meaning and his will to press on.
At that age a child should be playing with Lego, racing
around and getting covered in grass stains. I was unaware that something as
terrifying as suicide existed until I was at least 11. I was a particularly
lucky child and so that kind of thing didn’t enter my fragile young world; I
know that many others aren’t as fortunate but even so, this is wrong. I’m sure
everyone reading this has a pit in their gut just thinking about it.
Aaron (the little boy) had real problems and he’s only 9. Age has nothing to do with how problems effect/ impact a person. It horrifies me that this child’s challenges were probably disregarded as “no big deal” because he’s young. “Kids can be cruel,” that’s all, right? No. Kids can absorb that cruelty and carry it for the rest of their lives. There is no excuse for writing off someone’s pain as not important or real enough. All pain is real, at least to that person.
Now for the second line of this entry; below is a list of 10 millionaire businessmen who killed themselves. Not every man in this line up left a reason for their premature departure; is it safe to say they all felt justified in doing so? Clearly, and regardless nobody else can tell them that they weren't. Each of these individuals were people, with a life, a story and hardship...despite having financial resources that few can fathom; they are the 1%. Whatever their logic was, it is no less or more legitimate then Aaron or anyone else.
Any person, anywhere in the world, in any socio-economic
circumstance can go through real
problems. There is no actual definition of what is a real problem and what is a
silly/unimportant one; no quota to meet. One person’s struggles cannot be
compared to another’s. Compared to a 17-year-old girl in Kenya who is married
with children and is fighting to live, I have no problems whatsoever. That
having been said, when I met kids in similar situations to that, they were
happier than anyone I’ve ever seen in North America. So who is truly deprived?
Who has real problems?
In short, neither I nor anyone else can determine how one's pain stacks up against another's.