Forewarning: This is a quick rant about something that really strikes a nerve with me.

I’ve had a rough semester. Correction: college has been rough for me. I work a few jobs, my major is hard, I’ve had some roommate issues along with some bad days. But, I start to look back on those I’ve met in life thus far and start to think- who’s life isn’t rough?

I’m a nursing major, and one of the first things we learn in school is that pain (which is considered the sixth vital sign for any other medical nerds out there), is entirely subjective based on previous pain experiences. What that means is that if the most pain someone has ever felt is getting a paper cut- then that is the worst pain they have ever felt. Similarly, say someone regularly falls off of buildings and breaks 12 bones a day (which, I mean, I hope not, but for the metaphor just go along with it), then breaking 13 bones in a day is the worst pain THEY have ever felt.

Neither one is worse than or better than the other because being in pain- regardless of the cause- isn’t exactly a pleasurable experience. The same goes for stress. Another factor that that goes into health we learn in nursing school is called resilience- which is a person’s overall ability to bounce back. It’s something that is both learned and innate in nature. But, what matters is that it exists in all of us, and whether or not we are learning how to use it or we have found it and have been using it for a while; it’s there, it can be used, but it takes practice.

Some people learn quickly, some people not as quickly, but all people learn differently, and all people have the ability to learn in general. What we need to remember as we get annoyed at that girl sitting behind us in our something -ology 101 class complaining about her bad hair day is that we’ve all got something, and even if your something is not the same as someone else’s something, at the end of the day- it’s still something.

We really need to focus on loving and supporting each other. Not just as a certain gender, or as college students, or as millennials, but as people in general. The world is seriously lacking in validating the feelings of others as much as they are focused on denying other people the right to feel because someone has it worse. I’m not sitting here trying to say that those who have struggled don’t have a right to voice their struggles, explain their situations, and get the validation they deserve for their strength, or there some people aren’t as privileged as others. But, I am trying to voice that somewhere in everyone’s day, in everyone’s month, year, life, we all deserve a little bit of recognition for just making it.

I think the more acceptance we can provide for other people, the less conflict there will be in general. We are all people- doing what we can to make it. So, let’s stop denying people the right to feel a certain way, and open up the ability to actually have conversations with one another in order to understand each other. Maybe then we can create harmony, maybe then we can create peace, or maybe then we could even just make a bad day better. It’s possible you guys, we just have to try.