The First World Problem: Sonder

Sonder Sonder (n) - the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Human beings are all inherently selfish. As human beings we spend so much time caught up in our own heads, we forget the fact that we are not the only ones whom the stage is set for. We forget that there are more than seven billion other individuals on this planet. Seven billion other individuals, who are just as careless, foolish, bitter, animated as we, ourselves can be. Above all, we forget that the other seven billion individuals on this planet are as human as us. About every four years or so I spend a couple weeks in Nepal visiting my family members who live there. Every time I go back I can not help but wonder what I would have been like if my family had never moved to the US, and in this wondering I always find myself …show more content…
The term implies that the people living in poor countries do not face these small, trivial problems; instead they solely face life threatening problems. I think that it is a part of being human, and that no matter what situation one is in, as human beings we all face these insignificant, petty problems in our everyday lives. However in saying that something is a first world problem, it denies people in poor countries the “luxury” of having to deal with insignificant problems that agitate all of us with privileged lives. Instead it advocates for that perpetual image of people in poor countries are only facing life threatening problems, that they are constantly suffering because of poverty, hunger, lack of a water source, etc. In saying this, I am not in anyway denying the fact that people in developing countries do face life threatening problems, but it seems condescending to assume that, hunger, poverty, etc., are all that are going on in the lives of people living in poor