First World Problems

 "Spilled Starbucks coffee on my yellow t-shirt while sitting in the shade on the Pearl Street Mall."

A wordy yet apt example of a "first-world problem."  Jessica Hagy's Venn diagram illustrates the idea nicely.

Others include not being fulfilled in my high paying job, worrying whether I can live the good life in retirement, and feeling hassled about keeping all my mobile devices updated, synced and charged.

I recently hung out with my younger sister for a few days.  She is adept at both eliciting laughs and laughing at herself, utterly admirable attributes.  A few times she caught herself complaining about trivial problems like having to replace the cat-pee soaked carpet in her house after a tenant left, and she referred to these as "first world problems."

I find the term, upon examination, to be a valuable way to instantly regain sorely needed perspective when I am in the depths of obsessive worry in a complicated world.  Lately I've been invoking the concept often as I go about my day, since almost every "problem" I encounter pales in comparison with the life and death issues faced by much of the world's population.

The Urban Dictionary definition:  "problems from living in a wealthy, industrialized nation that third worlders would probably roll their eyes at."  Here in the US, many of us are so obliviously fortunate that first world problems are all we've ever known.  It's like an instant injection of positive mental health to remember this, except that you have to have reasonably good mental health in the first place to remember this.