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Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

Your hard times are only hard relative to that of others, and even then, only in some aspects.

But we know the human brain doesn't work like that anyway. My life is, in almost all aspects, better than the vast majority of the people in the world, but that doesn't stop my brain from making me feel completely awful when something bad (relatively) happens. Your brain doesn't say 'well, you've been fired from the company you worked for for 5 years, but hey, at least you have fresh drinking water'.

Locus of perception. Even just being "cold" relative to someone else (temperature).

Locus of perception isn't really a "phrase" that is accepted, though it would merit some Cog Psych research to quantify the phenomena above.

> well, you've been fired from the company you worked for for 5 years, but hey, at least you have fresh drinking water

I'm not sure whether it's my brain, or 'me' that's saying it, but this is pretty much what I tell myself every time something 'bad' happens to me. Works like a charm.

> Your brain doesn't say 'well, you've been fired from the company you worked for for 5 years, but hey, at least you have fresh drinking water'.

You should maybe look into getting a more compassionate brain.

In what way is your message to him helpful?

That's ridiculous. You've never felt upset about a girl (or guy) , or because you lost your job, or just because you had a shitty day? You can probably rationalise it away as 'well people are worse off than me' but it likely doesn't make you feel a whole bunch better.

You're right, I could have worded that differently and better. What I intended to say was that even then, there's usually some thoughts about being happy for the wonderful things I do have, bubbling in the background (not continuously, of course). And like you said, I also try not to go with the "some people have it much worse" line of reasoning.

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