The Story Of The Phrase That Changed My Life

Let me set the scene for you real quick. It’s 4.30am. You’re at the airport. You’re at the back of a long line for a service that hasn’t even opened yet. An hour ago you were asleep or at least just woken up by your alarm so you kinda feel like you’re in some sort of dream or parallel universe, but you still brought your eyebrow pencil to try and not scare everyone around you and to look half alive at least. Overall, you’re just uncomfy, and tired, and your back is aching from the carry on bag that you are using to hold all the useless crap that didn’t fit in your suitcase. So what do you do? Start complaining. You start to say “why is this flight so early?” and “why aren’t we even moving, I just want to go to bed!”.

Not a pretty sight, am I right? Well, I’m sure you can guess this was me last April on my way to Spain for the week. It was the first foreign trip I had taken since COVID and I was really excited, but, despite the fact I would say I’m a morning person, I’m not a crazy 3.30am wake-up type of gal, so we’ll say that morning wasn’t the most enjoyable. Funnily enough though, as I had one eyebrow completed, my friend’s mum and boyfriend came into the airport too. It was a nice surprise and they were on their way to go to Portugal. The line still hadn’t started to move so we chatted for a while, or, the mum’s chatted. They got onto how it was so early and how the airport hasn’t even opened yet, and then the boyfriend said something that kinda stuck with me.

I don’t know if it was the fact I was practically sleepwalking or what, but what he said kinda “opened my eyes”. It wasn’t revolutionary, I knew exactly what he meant, but just in that situation it really changed my mood. I hope I’m not hyping this up too much though for real, but I’ll tell you what he said. In the middle of us talking about how fed up we were standing in this line and being up so early and already having made a mistake (forgetting to pre-pay for parking) he said…

“First world problems, am I right?”

Typing that out sounds less impactful but at that moment it really made me question why the fuck I was complaining. Really I was complaining about how I had to go and travel to a luxurious, warm country where I would be sunbathing and making great memories. I was literally complaining about how hard my life is having to wake up at 3.30am to go on a fucking holiday. When you think about it, I had no right to complain.

And I apply that to so much in my life now. If my phone doesn’t work or I maybe have to wait another 5 minutes for my mum to pick me up from school, or if I’m slightly cold in my safe and secure home, I think about how lucky much worse it could be.

Sometimes when I say that I wonder if people assume that I’m dismissing all of their feelings because we can still have problems. Maybe they aren’t the same as everyone else’s, but we still have problems and we shouldn’t feel guilty for being sad in the life we have. Even with celebrities we look at them and think they have it all so when they feel lonely or sad then a bunch of us judge them and think they are ungrateful and ignorant, but in reality they are human and life isn’t easy even for the people who seem to have it all.

So I just want to make sure that what I mean by this post is that you should always look at the bigger picture, not to make yourself feel like a bad person, but to help you think through your problems and realise that it’s all going to be ok. It helps me to put a more positive light onto situations and then it just makes situations better for me. It isn’t just to keep you “woke” but it benefits your life because you take in every second of every horribly beautiful moment.

I hope that made sense because it’s always hard to convey what you mean into text. That’s why I hated doing English in school because I would be able to understand and I got what they meant pretty much, but I either couldn’t put it into words, or I couldn’t put it into the words they wanted. So that’s great that I have a blog where communication is key *thumbs up*.

So yeah, I am gonna go now but I just want to give a heads up that VERY SOON I am going to release a post about 2 nights ago when I went to the concert of my FAVOURITE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and when I say I cried after, it is no joke. I have that post-concert crisis/depression at the moment and it’s hitting real hard this time. So look forward to that ok! I hope you have a great day, stay safe and stay yourself PERIODT.

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