“LOOK, THERE’S A SHEEP”
August 19, 2022“What sort of assortment…?”.
August 19, 2022Admittedly, some problems were not known to me when I was new here.
Admittedly, I also made this statement at the time.
“Man, you have problems.”
Should I take you with me on the journey, in which situations I thought that, for example? Without you judging me too soon?
“I’m so stressed. I still have so much shopping to do before Christmas.”
“I ate too much. I really need to lose weight.”
“We haven’t been on vacation for a year.”
“What am I going to wear today?.” – Oops, that’s me.
“Horrible! There’s not even a receipt for the tip.” – a German couple on a round trip in Egypt.
“The American had too little frosting.” – Attention, not the man, but the pastry. At least I assumed so.
Even if I was surprised by such statements, the comparison with Africa made me even sadder:
“That’s right, people are so poor in Africa. We are so privileged here and complain at a high level.”
Because that’s not true either. One look at children playing naked and they’re already “poor”?.
And anyway: what does privileged mean?
It’s great that you’re surrounded by luxury. A bad conscience won’t do you any good either.
Today I see it differently, for these 2 reasons:
📍Problems are in the eye of the beholder. Everyone has their own pain tolerance and that’s a good thing.
Exploring the real reason behind your whining for yourself is crucial and will take you further. Don’t be ashamed of your problems. You can keep that.
(Cleaning up is a luxury problem for my children)
📍It’s great to have luxury problems. This is how you realize what you have already achieved. In the next stage, you realize that they might not be problems at all.
It’s important for me to be careful who I say something to.
If I don’t succeed, then I take the dismay of the other person as an opportunity to question: “Is that really a problem?”
Fortunately, my children and my husband help me with this.
Are you new to another culture and thinking like I did back then? Take care. At some point it might get to you.
Even better: I wish that you make a conscious decision for yourself which habits you adopt and which you don’t. We always have that choice.
Responding empathetically to these perhaps “non-existent” problems is a magical way of learning from each other. Even if you end up laughing about it.
It also helps me to say “I’m not in it”.
Who knows, maybe an under-frosted American really is a problem.
Now to you: Which luxury problem do you have today? I won’t take it away from you, I promise.