Public Service Announcement - No Disclaimer Required

There’s a conversation I keep having a lot here lately. It goes something like this:

Me: How are you doing?
Friend: Well, to be honest, not too well. I lost my job, my spouse left me, my dog died, I have a bad case of the clap and I’m going blind. But, I mean, I know it’s nothing like what you’ve been through.
Me: I don’t know, that sounds pretty awful.

Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly the conversation word for word. The thing is, whenever anybody starts telling me about a situation they have had to deal with, whether it’s bad health, financial woes, family problems, or whatever, they almost always follow it up with a disclaimer of how their problems are in no way a comparison to my own battle with cancer. And I honestly don’t know how to respond to that. First of all, I never assume they are making a comparison to begin with. What sort of jackass would do that? But secondly, having cancer doesn’t mean I’m the only person allowed to have problems.

I assure you, nobody is more aware of just how terrible this past year has been for me more than I am. I’m the one who had to go through it. But at no point do I recall ever thinking I have it worse than anyone else on the planet. If anything, I have gained a deeper appreciation for how lucky I have often been. Just last night I was sitting by a campfire talking with a friend about the past year. He said to me that when he has bad days and feels himself getting irritated over life’s unfairness, he thinks of me and it helps him put his trials into perspective. I told him that I do the same thing. There have been many times when I lost myself in self-pity and had to stop and remind myself there are those people who have suffered much more greatly than I have. Over the last year I have met some incredible people and have listened to some truly heart wrenching stories. No matter who you are, there will always be someone who has it better than you. And there is always someone who has it much worse. Each new day that we wake up gives us an opportunity to try to overcome obstacles, improve our situation, and prepare for new challenges. Nobody is immune to difficulties in life. Sometimes the hardest part is remembering that nothing lasts forever, and whatever struggle you are currently facing will eventually be but a brief moment of your past.

I wouldn’t want to be someone who had never experienced hard times. Every rough patch I’ve endured in life has made me a stronger person, and has made me more empathetic to other people’s dilemmas. Quite frankly, I fully believe that a lack of empathy is the root of most of the world’s problems. Without it, it becomes easy to quickly judge a person’s situation without fully understanding it. Not to be confused with sympathy, empathy allows us to appreciate our unique differences and value our sameness; to understand how close we all are to walking in someone else's shoes, had the hands of fate varied even ever so slightly. Perspective. It changes with time and circumstance.

So please, do me a favor and drop the disclaimer. I am still the same person fundamentally as I was over a year ago, only with a new and different perspective. But if I loved you before, I still love you now. I still care about your happiness, and am sympathetic to your problems. Yes, you are allowed to have them too. You do not have to justify your troubles and you do not have to apologize for the need to occasionally talk about them. You’re allowed to vent every now and then - even to someone you think has it worse than you.