First world problems are more of a problem than we expected!
What do you take for granted? Seriously, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?
I’m willing to bet that the first answer you thought of wasn’t cheese. And before we set off on our trip, it wouldn’t have been mine either.
We all know that we’re lucky to live in the 1st world, that it’s just a happy accident of birth that we came onto this planet in a country with good education, healthcare, stable government, and enough wealth to put food on the table consistently.
We might not think about it as we go about the minutiae of our daily lives, but we all read and watch enough news to know starvation, war, major health crises, poverty, education and political instability are issues for more than half of the world’s population, and it’s not uncommon when hearing or reading about the latest horrific story to give silent thanks for our good fortune.
As lucky westerners, we sometimes even take holidays (like our recent jaunt to Vietnam) to places where such issues are a way of life, and when we do, it helps to reinforce in our own minds just how lucky we are, and perhaps also what responsibility we have to help, given that often the West has caused or exacerbated many of the problems in the first place.
So before we set off on our circumnavigation, I reflected on these issues, not least because I was aware of the paradox that the majority of places we’d be visiting in our yacht would be in the second or third world, and the people we’d be meeting could never contemplate being able to do as we’re doing and spend several years travelling/adventuring/fulfilling a dream.
I wondered how confronting I would find it, and how much it would reinforce just how lucky we were.
But here’s the thing. Since by definition I already knew what made us lucky, I wasn’t really taking it for granted. And so nothing we’ve seen in terms of these issues has really been surprising or particularly eye-opening.
(It also helps that the majority of people we encounter appear to be significantly happier and more carefree than those going about their lives in a big, frantic city like Sydney).
It turns out that it’s actually the smaller stuff that we REALLY notice, and it’s the very definition of “First World Problems”.
In the first world, the critical stuff is already taken care of. And that has allowed a huge and thriving economy to spring up around pampering us. In the west, there will be 30 types of cheese just in the “processed” cheese part of the supermarket, not to mention another 30 types in the artisan cheese part of the deli counter.
Mmmm. Cheese! Sometimes I wake up dreaming of this stuff.
Want a beanbag in Sydney? No problem. We got this. 12 different types of beans, three different sizes, four different shapes, and 40 different types of indoor and outdoor material. In Malaysia…What’s a beanbag?
Want some cotton buds? Sure thing. We’ve got small, medium and large tips. For babies. For adults. Come in packs of 10, 20, 50, 100, 500. And that’s just in your local small pharmacy, never mind the supermarket. When we ran out in Thailand, we searched in four supermarkets and countless little markets, just to find one pack of 20, that was priced at more than a 500 pack was in Sydney.
Want something you can’t find in the shops? No problem. That’s what Amazon and E-bay are for. Everything is available, just a click away. And delivered in 6 hours, 2 days or 2 weeks, depending on how much you want to pay.
Since we don’t know where we’re going to be in in a few days or weeks, ordering online is nigh on impossible, and that’s before you take into account import taxes ranging from 10%-300%, and geo-fencing preventing delivery in some of the countries we’ve been in.
This “decadence” for want of a better word, immerses us in the West. Why? Because there’s a huge market for it. Our basic needs are already taken care of. People can afford it. And the luxury of choice, availability and cheap prices for non-essential items makes life feel so much better and easier.
Since it’s all we’ve ever been used to, and it’s not important enough to make the news, it’s the very definition of something we take for granted until it’s no longer around.
And since it’s so all-encompassing, covering so many aspects of our lives, there’s rarely a day that goes by now when we don’t notice it for its absence.
For the very best of reasons, these things are just not important here in SE Asia, and in the grand scheme of things, the absence of such luxury is not that big a deal – you get used to it.
But the point is we are having to get used to it. I hadn’t anticipated it beforehand as it’s something we just didn’t ever realise we were the lucky beneficiaries of.
So when you’re in the supermarket this week, take a moment to stop and think about how lucky you are to live somewhere where there are 50 different types of cheese, and what it says about the really important things in your environment.
Oh, and send us some cotton buds. Please!
This post is one of a series of 10 insights and learnings from the first 12 months of our circumnavigation. Click here to see the full list and access the other posts.
