Have you ever had a conversation with a friend that goes something like this?

You: I’m so tired. I only got five hours of sleep.

Friend 1: Wow, you got five hours? Lucky! I only got four!

Friend 2: That’s nothing. I had to pull an all-nighter.

If you couldn’t tell from that example, I’m a college student, so that is actually quite relevant to me and this conversation has definitely happened before, probably more often than I’d care to admit. But for those of you who have a consistent sleep schedule, just imagine something else: workload, problems at home, friend issues, you name it. We are constantly trying to one-up each other on whose life sucks the most. If my life can’t look better than everyone else’s, at least it can be the worst. Except it’s never the worst. Someone’s life is always worse than mine.

I found a couple songs by Icon For Hire which call people out on this mindset. Icon For Hire is a rock band previously signed with Tooth & Nail Records. They are currently working on their third album "You Can’t Kill Us," which will be their first album since leaving the label. This past week, they released a song called “Get Well II” which was meant to be a continuation of “Get Well” from their first album.

I will be referring to these lyrics for the next couple sections, so listen here if you want (but I'll summarize them if you don't want to listen).

Now listen to the second one!

For those of you who aren’t into this type of music or would simply rather read than listen, I’ll summarize the messages. Basically, the songs are a commentary on how people are content with being miserable and how people like to compare their pain to one another’s. In “Get Well,” lyrics include, “We throw tantrums like parties/we’re not happy ‘til everyone knows we’re sick/...we’ve hurt bad enough, right, we’ve earned it” and “Can you find me friends who don’t rank me on what I’ve been through/the more battle scars, the more attention it gets you.” The second installment has lyrics such as “I need my pain/don’t take it away/my sad makes me special” and “the truth is we’re no different than the others/wearing our sob stories like colors.”

Yes, these lyrics are cynical and sarcastic, but there is truth in them. We complain to be heard. We want the world to know what we’ve been through, as if we need people to affirm that our lives are terrible. We’ve earned the right to complain. We think our problems make us special, but when we’re all going through these terrible [usually first world] problems, well, Syndrome said it best:

It would be wildly insensitive of me to want to brush issues under the rug, to pretend that pain doesn’t exist, to say that people don’t struggle. I am absolutely a proponent of people discussing what is going on in their lives with people, sharing their pain, deepening relationships through disclosure. I love when people are vulnerable and honest with both themselves and people who care about them and when people seek help for their problems. I’m not trying to say that people don’t suffer. I’m saying stop trying to compare your suffering. Stop trying to invalidate someone else’s pain. It’s like how people make themselves feel better at another’s expense just in reverse. Instead of making yourself look better, you make yourself look worse.

It shouldn’t be a contest and even if it was, you shouldn’t want to win it. Is it gratifying for people to confirm your suffering as the worst anyone has ever experienced, even though you know other people have it worse off than you? We’re all vying for attention and validation, wearing our scars like an initiation into an elite club.

This actually brings me to another point: people do not feel comfortable being okay. This seems preposterous, what with people posting the highlight reels of their day on social media and it appears like people have fun and exciting lives that are #nofilter and #blessed. But the truth is we need to have something wrong with our lives. Sometimes, we don’t want to get better because if we did, we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves. We don’t want to sound like we’re bragging, so we talk about everything that’s wrong, as if swinging to the opposite extreme on the spectrum is somehow better.

There isn’t really an easy or simple solution to this problem, but I challenge you to start noticing this in your life, particularly in conversations with people.The first step toward change is choosing not to play this game. We don’t have to constantly compare our lives for better or for worse. We already know that makes us miserable. Of course, that just gives us more to complain about. And so the cycle continues.