When things are going wrong, remember it’s all relative!

If I was superstitious, I would say 2022 isn’t my year even though it had just begun. So many things were going wrong.

My mom was just recovering from a bout of sickness that lasted months, my brother underwent a cardiac procedure, then my sister got a referral to see a cardiac specialist too. Back in the United States, my husband was also going through a difficult patch.

And my things were falling apart.

In my last post, I mentioned my phone stopped charging. Just when I was wondering if I need to spend on a new phone, I watch my laptop screen begin to actively die.

To make things worse, I couldn’t use my flight credits from American Airlines to purchase my flight back to the US. A customer service agent gave me the wrong instructions and all but forfeited my flight credits. After getting tossed around by several customer service representatives, I accepted that they weren’t going to help me.

How was I going to get a new phone, a new laptop, and long-haul flight tickets all at the same time? I couldn’t afford to do all that, especially now that I’ve lost the job I had. But all three items are essential!

Then my nephew fell sick with COVID-19 right before I was supposed to fly. I can’t fly within 5 days of exposure to a positive case. So I delayed my flight booking. The day after I booked my flight, my brother came down with COVID-19 too. But it was time to go. A couple of days after I left, my dad got it too.

In other words, I left when my family needed me the most.

So yeah, the beginning of 2022 hasn’t been great.

The scale of problems is relative

However unpleasant the year has been for me, my problems are really insignificant when considering the big picture.

Sometime during my 25-hour flight, a war broke out. People’s lives were changed overnight, families were torn apart, and homes were destroyed. Instead of walking to school, children are walking to train stations and borders with their mothers in search of safety.

Yes, I still have issues with social anxiety and under-employment and I’m depleting what little savings I have. But my family is safe, my brother and dad will recover from COVID-19, and my husband doesn’t need to fight in a war.

Also…

If we all consider the biggest perspective we can, we’ll see that we’re like specks of dust bustling around a little rock floating in an unimaginably vast universe. We’re just a blip in the history of it too. This moment, so painful and overwhelming, becomes almost inconsequential when we consider the scale of it all.

Life has a way of straightening itself out

I shed a few tears when my laptop died. I was so upset I whined about it in my Instagram story. My good friend spotted the story and told me our mutual friend has a spare laptop she wasn’t going to use anymore. So I shamelessly asked my friend for her spare laptop and she graciously gave it to me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this post.

I managed to get my phone repaired after asking several shops too.

As for American Airlines, I learned not to expect them to help me. If you ever fly with them, avoid canceling flights and using flight credits and you should be fine. Otherwise, you may run into problems.

After a hectic two weeks, life for my family members in Singapore is slowly returning to normal too.

In retrospect, it was silly to get so upset over my issues. For one, they weren’t serious. I panicked because I was worried about the what-ifs. What if my parents catch a bad case of the virus? What if I can’t afford a new laptop? Or, what if I couldn’t find suitable work while dealing with my personal issues and ran out of money?

I forgot that life is like a series of problem-solving. As long as we don’t stop trying to find solutions, everything will work out somehow. If not, we’ll find the strength to cope with it, somehow. Life is easier when we stop wanting everything to turn out a certain way.

Besides, little specks of dust shouldn’t worry. They’re meant to dance in the sun.