I was scrolling through my twitter feed the other day when I came across a video of some 10 year old boys in Eastern Aleppo, Syria playing in a crater that had filled with water from a broken pipe. The boys were having the time of their lives, smiling and laughing while jumping and swimming in the muddy water. The reporter asked them if they knew how the crater was created. They responded "It was created by a bomb."
In the early hours of the morning their village was attacked. Missiles destroyed buildings and wiped out families. The missile that caused the swimming crater had damaged the water supply. Thousands of people now have no access to water in the arid dry heat. But to the boys, the war-zone is a waterpark. It may be because they don't understand the big picture, but for that moment they were just kids having fun.
Seeing this video made me realize how truly lucky I am. I attend one of the top universities in the world. I have a roof over my head, access to safe food and water and here I am complaining about how I have too much homework, I don't have the pair of shoes I want, or how I have to walk a couple blocks to go get food. And I hear people behind me in lecture halls complaining about how they only have the tall Hunter rain boots and they need to get the short ones too because the tall ones are too annoying. Across the world people have to sleep in rain with no shoes and no shelter and your complaining about how you don't have multiple pairs of rain boots that you use maybe four times a month. That's privileged perspective.
Stepping back and realizing how privileged my own perspective is eye-opening. We live in a society of "first world problems" where we complain that our internet is too slow, our coffee is too cold, or about how we don't have the newest and greatest technology. When there are people all over the world who don't have access to the internet, who think that coffee is a special occasions food, and are thankful for having a tv or landline.
If you have any money saved, a hobby that requires some equipment or supplies, a variety of clothes in your closet, two cars in any condition, and live in your own home, you are in the top 5% of the world's wealthy.
We are all guilty of it. Complaining about little things in our life that don't go exactly as planned. We take for granted the life we have. I am not saying that we need to give our lives up, but we should recognize that we are fortunate and our "first world problems" mean so little compared to the problems of others.
When we look at the picture of those boys, we see a decimated town, a crater made from a bomb that has made it impossible for some to have access to water. However, those boys see a place to have fun, to play and be happy amidst the destruction around them. It's all about perspective.
