I really wish the “First-World problem” phrase hadn’t been invented. It’s doing my head in. Every time I’m hungry, I tell myself I’m having a First-World problem. Headache from sitting in front of a screen all day? First-World problem. Feel sick about the new couch we just bought and is it the right colour? Shut up and think of the people in Syria.
Are my everyday annoying little problems now to be amplified by the additional problem of First-World guilt, because I am privileged enough to have all these problems in the first place? Now I have another problem to add to the list.
Because over here I am constantly rolling my eyes at myself, constantly telling myself to get a grip and get over it, and shut up and get serious.
Suffering from Tony Abbott, surely-it’s-a-bad-dream, syndrome? Suck it up, some people don’t get the right to vote at all. Spending the day stressing because you have too much work to do? You have work, you have a home, you have an abundance of everything you will ever need and more. Get on with it.
Run out of kiwifruit, and the strawberries I paid $4 for were half mouldy? Sick of looking for the organic, fair-trade chocolate the other adult in this house hid somewhere so the kids didn’t get to it first? Feel a bit dizzy because you had three lattes this morning and now need a chardonnay to level yourself out, but it’s only Tuesday, which technically should be an alcohol-free day? Oh please, stop it right now.
Now I’m having a crisis because I’m complaining about having to complain that I have nothing to complain about. Gosh, are you even still with me here?
I know we have it good here. I remind my children of it every day, because my own memory of childhood has the collection box for the Ethiopian children stamped right in the middle of it, along with the over-boiled soggy green beans I was forced to eat on their account.
In fact, every time I gagged on broccoli as a child I was made to remember those who lived in places where there was no broccoli. Every time I was given something shiny and new for Christmas I was told I was lucky to have it, and I knew it.
I grew up in a town where the manufacturing industry that fed most families faltered and slowed down. It was over the course of many years, but I was constantly reminded that other people went without – lunch, for example. Seriously, I remember kids coming to school without lunch.
My kids know how lucky they are to be here, in a country that gives them safety and warmth, good food, and a future they can look forward to.
They know it because I drum it into them. It’s my job. A First-World problem wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a Third World – and every time they complain because we’re having roast chicken again or they need a new bag because the perfectly good one they have is just not big enough for their Harry Potter books, I remind them.
In fact, one of their friends just told me not to pat her dog because he smells of old goat’s cheese, and she thinks maybe he found some in their bin and rolled in it, which is kind of a First-World problem – because who throws out goat’s cheese, it costs a bomb. But it’s a cute one.
