As stories of destruction and survival continue to pour in from Japan following the recent 8.9 earthquake and resulting tsunamis, the seemingly inevitable line of thinking for a lot of people is to take this opportunity and use it to teach us about how petty the problems we have are. Oh, you have a lot of homework? Well, people are dying in Japan! Oh, you’re having utility problems in your house? Well, people are dying in Japan! Oh, you’re not feeling so well? You think you might be coming down with a cold? Well, people are dying in Japan!
While I understand the tragic nature of this natural disaster, I’ve never been a fan of this argument. To me, knowing that there are worse problems elsewhere in the world doesn’t diminish the problems I already have. Using other people’s tragedies to guilt me into realizing that, in the always-alluded-to “grand scheme of things,” my problems aren’t so bad should not be as prevalent as it is. We should just live with the problems we have, not compare and contrast them with other people’s problems. It doesn’t seem like the right attitude to bring to these situations.
