As a freshman in high school, your life is difficult. You have to adjust to a larger student body, quicker class changes, and bigger human beings. You're in a new place, fighting through the mob to your next class, worried that you won't make it on time. (My only advice: you will make it on time. Stop running in the halls.) And throughout the year, you begin making friends with upper classmen. How cool, right? But then they start calling you "baby" and laugh at all of your problems.
Oh, they remember when they only had algebra homework. Oh, they remember when they couldn't drive themselves. Oh, they remember when. But they are past that now, and so they ridicule you.
What are your problems worth? They are so easy to conquer. Get over yourself.
When did our society begin to lack sympathy? Why do we stress our own problems, but not allow others to do the same? Why are our problems important? Why do we forget that those problems were our own a year back, a month back, yesterday? Once we conquer struggle, we dismiss its weight on other people. It never stops.
There will always be someone older who has it worse off.
Oh, wait until you have to take the ACT. Oh, wait until you have to apply to colleges. Oh, wait until you have to take college finals. Oh, wait until you write a 100-page thesis. Oh, wait until you have to apply for a real job. Oh, wait until you drag your teenagers all around town. Oh, wait until your children are trying to force you into a retirement home.
There are college freshmen I know tweeting, mocking the struggle of high school finals. They laugh at the easiness of it all. High school was such a breeze, wait until you have actual problems. Yet, I know that if you go back a year in those Twitter accounts--just a year--you will find the timeline stained with complaints about high school. Once upon a time those calculus finals sucked. But not anymore!
I am astonished at the lack of sympathy people can feel. Sympathy, even. The emotion in which you have gone through the same struggle and can feel for the other person, because you went through the same thing. It should be easier than empathy. Yet, instead, people scoff at the problems they went through in the past. Since they got through it, the struggle is no longer seen. They only think about moving past it, not being in it. We no longer think about struggles that we have overcome. We no longer see them as problems, but things with easily solutions. We do not realize that we are going through harder situations now because we can stand it.
People younger than us, they cannot stand it. Yes, a chemistry final in college can be disastrous. Yet, you are able to withstand it because you are in college, you have gone through the high school struggle, you have passed that mark. Because those things are no longer hard for you, here is a new set of strifes. A high school junior has neither finished his high school finals nor finished taking the ACT, so college-level chemistry exams are not on his or her agenda yet. He or she is not going through the same struggle as you because he has not reached it yet. One day, he or she will tweet about his thesis paper. Yet, right now he will tweet about his AP language and comp mock exam because that is the most struggle he can take right now.
Please, remember that once you could not surpass your high school problems.
Please, remember that once you were worried about not finding a prom date instead of not finding a husband.
Please, remember that you were once this person, complaining about finals instead of bills.
Sympathize.