Your past decides the nature of your complaints in the present. Humans tend to live in present reality through the lens of past. We constantly amend our present situations based on our past experiences. Depending on past experiences, we constantly try and make present and/or future better than the past. Nothing is wrong in it, is it? However, life doesn’t always follow the linear progression.
If you have not experienced any kind of adversity or difficult circumstances until very later years in your life, you may be up for a big surprise when it hits you hard. Because you do not have any past reference to refer to. You don’t have any bandwidth to deal with. You have no worse example to compare against.
For example, lets say you have had a pretty good life since birth with all the luxuries, roof over your head and fine food to feed your stomach. Now suddenly pandemic has hit and you are required to quarantine for 14 days in isolation in a relatively nice hotel with basic food provided. You have never faced anything like this before and thus, you may start complaining about tiny hotel room, no wifi, cold expired food, dirty sheets etc.etc., This is not really your fault because you have not seen a worse situation than this and have no basis to compare against. Now there is another person who is required to quarantine in the same hotel with same conditions but this person has had pretty bleak past and has lived in refugee camps for few years, hardly getting a meal in a day. It is very very likely that that this person will get through 14 days in much better emotional state than you. This person may not complain at all. Refugee camp is probably too extreme example but you can substitute it with any person who had faced some struggles in life.
Thus, sometimes the place you come from, the environment you grow up, almost gives you an emotional edge which others do not possess. You become prone to trivial problems in life. You don’t have to practice gratitude, you naturally become grateful to life.
This also draws my attention as a parent. We want to provide the best to our children. It is a natural tendency. Every parent thinks my kid should not go through the hardships that I went through. So we try to provide the best education, comfort and luxuries. I also catch myself doing this at times however, I am a little cautious of this approach. When it comes to our daughter, I am always little hesitant to provide too much, too easily and too early. I consciously try to introduce little friction and discomfort because I feel this will reap benefits in her later years. This will provide her good reference point to face difficult future situations which no-one is immune to.
Best education can get you a degree but no school or university teaches how to face adversity or develop emotional resilience.
Life is already too easy and comfortable in many ways than it was just few decades ago. With changing times, the nature of our problems and complaints is also changing.
The state of your emotional well being is defined by the things you are too easily bothered with.
