There’s another game we love to play – one-up-man-ship of problems – or as I love to say in the vernacular, “My sh*t is worse than your sh*t”.
This is a distracting and irrelevant game because we do not have other people’s circumstances, attitudes, backgrounds, etc. Whenever we compare ourselves to others, we risk losing connection with the purpose of our own journey.
For instance, I was, for all intents and purposes, a blessed and spoiled child and young adult. On a scale of dysfunction, my family would have rated fairly low, like most families. However, my own angst and dramas were created mainly in my own head. My stumbling blocks as a young woman were in the field of relationships and the search for love. I became so confused and full of pain that I thought suicide was the only recourse. I felt too stupid (very painful for any German!) in this game of life that I just wanted to bail out altogether.
In hindsight, this turned into a golden pivot moment, where my life turned around totally – eventually.
So what I’m trying to say is that, for me, my circumstances, my pain, my lessons, might not have meant anything to anyone else, but were totally right for my situation, for the path that I was meant to go down.
Similarly, other people’s pain and lessons might be something you could easily deal with if they were presented to you.
I like this little parable, not sure where it came from, Jewish I believe. Anyway, it goes like this …
God became very tired of hearing everyone’s complaints about their problems, day in and day out. Year after year, century after century, she had to endure listening to the whinging and kvetching. One day, she had enough.
“Alright already! Now hear this! Tomorrow morning, go to the town square, and unload all your problems into a pile in the middle. BUT, and get this, you have to pick up another problem instead. That way, you can trade hard problems for problems that you think are a little easier for you to bear. And then I don’t want to hear anymore about it. Capisce?”
Now everyone thought this was a wonderful idea, and became very excited at the idea of finally unloading their burdens. Everyone showed up to the town square the following morning, and took great delight in throwing their problems, finally, into the pile.
But then came the task of choosing another burden. Slowly, slowly, everyone looked closely at the various problems that were in the heap, inspecting them this way and that. People began to realise how difficult and complicated different problems were and what they would lead to.
And so it was, that in the end, after much deliberation, people took back the very same problem that they had thrown in, in the first place.
