SOCIETY
Do First World Problems Reflect Our Chronic Dissatisfaction?
Confronting the paradox of discontent in a world of abundance
It was 4:23 in the morning, and I was having a compulsive thought on a loop. I couldn’t call it a dream, because that would imply I was asleep, which I was not.
The thought consisted of a small tube, that had traveled down through my nostrils, and just like a vacuum cleaner, was sucking up all the unwanted stuff in my internal sinus headquarters.
Of course, in reality, I was just laying in bed, insomniac, because my nasal pathways were completely blocked and nothing was being vacuumed at all. In fact, I questioned if it wasn’t just compounding itself at that point.
In an act of sheer desperation, I took to a bucket of steaming hot water to inhale its fumes — my eyes burning from sleeplessness, and the astounding weight of my head looming over the pot in my dark kitchen.
I moaned my way back to bed, lamenting myself. I moaned the next morning when I didn’t feel much better, and my nose kept on leaking.
I whined and complained about my very real problem: the common flu.
It always hits me eventually — the feeling of gratitude contained in the alleyways of…
