It’s 7:15 AM, and I’m already over it. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, or perhaps it’s just my perimenopause brain firing on all cylinders, (due to the lack of sleep. I who slept like a baby with my HRT, or if it should be called PTE , but that is a separate post), but this morning has been a masterclass in watching people complain about their charmed lives. And honestly? I’m kind of tired of it.

My day began with a news report about a certain football player. He’s apparently “annoyed” because he can’t leave his current club for one that will pay him even more. A guy with more money than he could ever spend is whining because he can’t get a bigger paycheck. I get it. You are human, you have a will, you have dreams and you want to fulfill yourself. But you also signed a contract. You agreed to this life. The club owns you. You’re a professional footballer, which means your more or less a serf. A commodity. You have the privilege of doing what you love and being paid an obscene amount of money for it. Don’t expect me to shed a tear for the “poor little guy” who isn’t getting his way. You can always retrain and become a truck driver or a waiter. Newsflash, you will still be a serf.

Then, there was the line at the gas station. I was there because the grocery store wasn’t open, to buy a ridiculously expensive package of coffee. This as a consequence of that no one else in my household had the foresight to do that never ending grocery shopping. But that’s not what agitated me (well, only a little bit). It was the man in front of me, who spent his entire time with the cashier – moaning.

He was complaining about being sick for the past eight weeks, all summer long. He was apparently sent to the hospital (with the almost free ambulance service, which task is to cater for patients who need life supporting care while going to the ER, not transporting paper-cuts…) what sounded like a kidney stone (at least he was seeing a kidney specialist now) . And I understood it wasn’t his first time (apparently he’d been telling the poor cashier his health problems regularly). I also get this. It must have be an excruciating pain. And I have a strong personal understanding for chronic and returning pain. At the hospital they gave him a cortisone injection, which took away the pain, but thereafter “just sent him home.” And then he dropped the real bomb: this has been going on for 10 years.

Ten years! For ten years, this man has been getting into an ambulance, which I’m paying for with my tax money, and going to the hospital to the ER (!) for a recurring issue, without ever trying to figure out what’s actually wrong.

I just stood there, thinking:

“It’s too early for stupid people.”

Maybe the problem isn’t the lack of sleep or my hormones. Maybe it’s just a general lack of perspective. Perhaps it’s time we all stopped whining and started being grateful for the insane privileges we so often take for granted.

To my defense, as this entire post is about complaining, at least I was grateful last night, when I took the time to reflect over the fact of how privileged my family is. We just bought a trip half way around the world, with our own hard-earned money. That’s a freedom many people only dream of.

It’s the kind of freedom that footballer has, but he can’t seem to understand it. He’s so focused on what he doesn’t have that he can’t see what he does.