Can I just Get a Zipper? - #Wattys2015

Never Give up. Never Surrender

First, let me start this chapter off by not apologizing to anyone who has it worse than me. 

Nothing tips me off to an article about someone complaining that their life is so hard, and they are going to spend the whole article almost-whining/half-apologizing for themselves than starting it off with "First, let me say I know there are people in the world worse off than me...."

All that does is force me to make those comparisons. She is a married white woman who owns her own business and has a baby...life is so hard wah wah wah...but first, everyone should know that she understands she is really a lot more privileged than....well everybody. She brings it up so I start imagining all the people who have it worse off than her, which is not hard. And then I just think she is a whiny asshat.

Plenty of people in the world feel like they are suffering. Suffering is suffering. You really can't compare the suffering of Ms. Whine-o-rama above to that of a single teen mom whose parents have disowned her, or a mother in a third world country where food and water are scarce and going outside means risking her children being kidnapped and turned into soldiers. When you do that, then nobody is really suffering because there is always someone worse off!

And yet apologizing for one's privilege so it can be set aside and the author can start cranking out the "poor-mes" is like some kind of fashion right now. Is everybody secretly laying the groundwork for their IndieFundMe campaigns? 

Everybody suffers. And one persons suffering is not less valid than another persons suffering. There is no need to apologize for it. Just because someone is "better off" than the next person does not mean they can't suffer.

And now, I am going to very carefully not say that should stop complaining. Because whatever. Everyone complains. Writing a whole essay about it and presenting it as something people should spend their free time reading is a little obnoxious. IMO. 

Doesn't anyone have friends anymore? Sitting and listening to someone blab on about their complaints in life is like the number one duty in the friendship contract. Its even in bold, so you don't miss it if you are the kind of person who only scans contracts briefly before signing.

I am not saying people should not write about the things that make them suffer. Ahem, this book is basically all about the things I have suffered from. At least a few of them. But my goal has never been to say "boo-hoo look at me, I suffer."

No.

My goal is to share my experiences. And to show people, especially those who might be experiencing the same thing, that suffering is not the end. Life goes on despite suffering. Life and suffering happen together, sure. But life is not suffering. 

Life is life. It is what you want it to be. It is what you make of it.

Ever since I used that tube of chapstick to soothe my lips on the day where I thought hope had abandoned me, I learned to see past the suffering. 

I witness my suffering, but I do not judge it. It is what it is, and tomorrow it will be something else. And guess what? Complaining = judgement. Complaining means giving up because whatever the thing is, it has defeated you.

Don't let suffering defeat living.

Never give up. Never surrender.

Live.