"Suffering is Suffering"

An interesting point. Excerpts:

...suffering is suffering. Recently, a first world friend complained of a truly difficult week (dealing with car problems, home repair, doctors, teachers, and so on) and then appended the ubiquitous, "I know, first world problems," implying that she wasn't really suffering at all. And my sister Abby Tardiff, who has the ability to cut through B.S. without breaking a sweat, answered,

'By that logic, only one person on earth would be allowed to claim he was actually suffering. We can always find someone who is worse off than us. That doesn't necessarily prove that we're not suffering, just because we're suffering less than someone else.'

But still, didn't Pope Francis recently tell us to quit complaining?

'A] Christian who constantly complains, fails to be a good Christian: they become Mr. or Mrs. Whiner, no? Because they always complain about everything, right? Silence in endurance, silence in patience.'

Of course he's perfectly right. Constant complaining drains the life out of everything that is good. It lets the darkness seep into everything that is good, until you have nothing left but darkness.

But does that mean we need to go around with a cheerful grin pasted on our mugs all day long, no matter what? I don't know about you, but that would not help me in the slightest (and yes, I have tried!). If we find ourselves in a situation that tries our patience, exhausts us, makes us angry or helpless, it really doesn't help to say, "Yes, but at least I'm not starving in a lice infested mud hut!" All I get from that is deeper in my funk: not only am I better off than 90% of the women in the world, I'm an ungrateful, whiny brat! Somehow, this thought does not catapult me into good cheer.

Here's the key: there's a big difference between admitting we're suffering, and constantly complaining about it...