Today you're passed over for a promotion,
and you think the world is coming to an
end. Tomorrow you lose your job, and a
promotion is no longer important to you; you
just yearn to have your job back. Then
you lose your health, and suddenly you
realize how good you had it when your only
problem was not having a job.
When it gets down to it, I believe one of the main reasons we have such difficulty seeing our everyday problems in a relative light is that we take ourselves too seriously. There's a fine line between pathos and humor, and one of the many advantages that a human being has over every other species is that he possesses the capacity to transcend himself, i.e., the ability to detach himself both from situations and from his own thoughts.
One of the unique ways in which he is able to accomplish this is through the use of humor. As with transcendence, man is the only living creature who can laugh at himself. He can choose not to see every problem, every injustice, and every adversity as a life-or-death matter.
Fortunately, we have been given the ability to view our problems in a relative light. Not every bad break turns out to be a problem; not every problem is a bona fide injustice; and not every injustice is of major importance when juxtaposed against the millions of injustices that occur daily throughout the world.
To paraphrase Charles Dickens's first paragraph in A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times; it was, in fact, pretty much like any other time. Which is to say that crises come and go, but only one time in history is the world going to come to an end -- and one thing about which you can be certain is that you won't be around to remember how it happened anyway.
Learning to view things in a relative light is a skill that is almost certain to add many quality years to your life.
When it gets down to it, I believe one of the main reasons we have such difficulty seeing our everyday problems in a relative light is that we take ourselves too seriously. There's a fine line between pathos and humor, and one of the many advantages that a human being has over every other species is that he possesses the capacity to transcend himself, i.e., the ability to detach himself both from situations and from his own thoughts.
One of the unique ways in which he is able to accomplish this is through the use of humor. As with transcendence, man is the only living creature who can laugh at himself. He can choose not to see every problem, every injustice, and every adversity as a life-or-death matter.
Fortunately, we have been given the ability to view our problems in a relative light. Not every bad break turns out to be a problem; not every problem is a bona fide injustice; and not every injustice is of major importance when juxtaposed against the millions of injustices that occur daily throughout the world.
To paraphrase Charles Dickens's first paragraph in A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times; it was, in fact, pretty much like any other time. Which is to say that crises come and go, but only one time in history is the world going to come to an end -- and one thing about which you can be certain is that you won't be around to remember how it happened anyway.
Learning to view things in a relative light is a skill that is almost certain to add many quality years to your life.
No comments:
Post a Comment