You know, when you think about it, I don't actually have any problems.

Let's see; I'm unemployed. I have strange and unexplainable mood swings. I'm lethargic and unmotivated. The last few months have been as financially... interesting, as the next few will likely be. And to top it all of, I'm HUGELY discontent.

But that doesn't add up to a bad life. I'm an upper middle class white male. I have both of my parents. I have two degrees. I live in a welfare state with a strong anti-nuclear policy, where you can't buy handguns over the counter.

Now, I'm not without things that I wish I could change - I'd rather like a job. There are some people in my life I'd like to spend more time with than I do, and a couple who I'd like to spend less time with. I'd like more money than I have. I'd like to lose weight faster than I've been doing recently. But, out of all of those things, how many are actually problems?

I will never starve. No-one really close to me has ever died. I've been quite sick before, but never with anything crippling or fatal. Recent unpleasantness in my life has all turned out in my favour.

Do you want to know who I remind myself of?

90% of my friends.

I grew up on the North Shore. (For those of you not local to Auckland, the shore is where we keep the rich white folk) I distinctly remember having problems. I mean, every teenager has problems. Every teenager has to rebel against the stifling oppression of their confined lives. Now, I had problems for one reason and one reason alone; I thought I was meant to.

Back when I was 16, I had exactly the same deal as I have now - There were a number of things I would change if I could, but I didn't have any actual problems.

There are people out there with actual problems. I know many of them. I also know quite a few whiney bitches who should realise that they've got maybe some slight unpleasantness in their life, but any number of good or great things - or, at the VERY least, an absence of TRUELY bad things. My life isn't proactively good at the moment, but what bad has happened to me?

I remember the time in my second year when an acquaintance of mine turned up to university sporting an hours-old gash on his wrist from the previous night. I had no idea how to handle it, what to do in that sort of situation. Now, this wasn't the first suicide attempt I'd been privy to, if I recall correctly, it was the third - it was simply the first I thought there might have been a valid reason for. For the first time in my life I was confronted with: "The life of a person I know is so bleak, so torturous, so fucked up, that they are willing to end it just to kill the pain."

Before then, my mindset on ending your life was "Heh, wouldn't it be funny if that attention seeking git had got it wrong and actually died?" Because that was what it had been up to that point - Parasuicide, the technical term is - kids with two parents, 1.4 siblings and a white picket fence, reading you excruciating poetry about how hard their life is, and driving the point home by telling you they tried to cut their wrists with a viscously sharp banana, or some equally deadly weapon that proved to you that they really did want to end their unbearable emotional torment.

Sure, life isn't perfect. Yeah, your parents don't understand you. Yeah, she doesn't feel the same about you. Yeah your friends aren't as sympathetic as they should be, and yeah they're stupid. Yeah, that thing that happened shouldn't have. But (and I'm more upset about this than anybody, believe me) nobody ever gets everything they ever want. I really hate to admit this, but you've just got to get over it, and get on with your otherwise okay life.

There are people with problems, yes. People in countries ravaged by war or disease spring immediately to mind. But even within our rather privileged society - People who have been abused, those with incurable diseases, those trapped in dysfunctional environments - real ones, not "My parents treat me like a kid". But there's a significant difference between them and the angst factories who manufacture problems, and think life isn't worth living because the cute blonde chick has a boyfriend, even though you really love her, and you know you two'd be really great together, and you'd show her how special she really is, and you'd make one another’s lives complete and so forth.

So I'm going to keep whining, and keep ranting about things that annoy me, but if you see me on the street and ask me how I'm going, even on a bad day I'm going to say at least "Pretty good." because, looking at it objectively, thinking about all the things that could be happening to me that aren't - I'm goin' pretty damn good.

--Apathy Jack