What a great saying. I feel this in my very core.

Dealing with poverty in my youth, homeless at 16, no parents to help me, debilitating ADHD, tourettic OCD, bipolar type II, CPTSD from 10 years of intense childhood physical/emotional abuse, my full-ride college scholarships illegally stolen from me by a high school who knew I was homeless and had no recourse and allowed a teacher to illegally modify my grades out of pure spite, malnourished, intense, crippling sciatica, fused lumbar discs, possible fibromyalgia, and then developing excruciating daily pains and physical disability which greatly impacted my life and sometimes made me suicidal, which turned out to be an autoimmune disorder that took 10 years for doctors to figure out... an extremely intense case of gout developing since my teens...

I just keep pushing on but every day I see people who take so much for granted, and who are so ready to pass judgement without appreciating the basic privilege of good health.

I've had to deal with so much struggle that the average person wouldn't even want to take the time to hear all of it much less believe it, once someone momentarily realizes that they'd have it comparatively easy compared to others, they often get defensive as they begin to realize that their life doesn't have nearly as many barriers as they've convinced themselves, and they have to come to terms with not applying themselves harder. It's easier for them to be dismissive and tell me, "all your problems would go away if you worked out more" or tell me to get on a keto diet, or whatever have you, as if I haven't tried every single thing I can think of.

And the insane thing is I am still quite privileged compared to some people in war-torn countries, even if they are able to move around without swallowing a truckload of ibuprofen. Reminding myself of that is a source of strength and determination to keep moving forward.

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

How do you know I have good health? What an incredibly smug comment meant to silence someone with no basis in fact.

Well, the person you originally replied to mentioned having a disability, and your response was "yeah but you have kids so really you chose this and also I disagree that life is harder for some people."

The generous interpretation would be that you have sufficiently good health that you do not have to structure your life around it, and therefore lack understanding of the challenges faced by those who do.

The alternate interpretation, that you do understand and choose to ignore and dismiss, would be rather less generous to you.

So you took the generous route in publicly shaming them.

I think their quibble was with a different item being used as evidence there (i.e., having a family), not necessarily with all that was said.

I didn't publicly shame anyone. I pointed out their clear position of privilege to help them learn to apply empathy.

I think helping one another to build empathy is a good thing, and even if the person I replied to is unable to do so, it's possible that observing them tell a disabled person that they don't think their life is any harder will help other third parties such as yourself build that empathy.

I did not flag their original comment, but it's not for no reason it was flagged to death.

Text is a fairly imprecise form of communication. It's pretty common for multiple people to get triggered by misreading a post the same way if such a misread is possible.

In other cases downvoted posts are often the most interesting precisely because they trigger people with points they don't want to consider. I certainly wouldn't cite it as proof of any position.

I actually agreed with them that a disability makes life harder. I then pointed out other things that an individual did not choose can make life harder as well.

As for bringing up children, I did make the leap that that is generally a big difference between younger employees and older employees.

> I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.”

It sounds like what you think you wrote, is not in fact the words of yours that everybody has been reading.

My phone will drop contractions, and that would be charitable.

A double negative is risky without typos, though.

Hmm.. I think we are talking past each other. In my initial comment I said "I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” I still maintain that comment.

In my follow up comment I attempted to clarify my comment in response to giantg2's reply. "I do not have a disability (my wife may disagree) and I agree it makes life more challenging (wouldn’t be called a disability otherwise)." I completely agree a disability makes life more difficult. I simply added that it is not the only thing that makes life more difficult. All of these things need to be considered when making career/job decisions.

Let me take a step back here. You're contradicting yourself.

> In my initial comment I said "I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” I still maintain that comment.

> I completely agree a disability makes life more difficult.

Do you not see how it's hard to square the first statement, with the second? You do not agree that life is much harder for some people, but you do agree that a disability makes life more difficult?

> I think we are talking past each other. In my initial comment I said "I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” I still maintain that comment.

It sounds like you have very little experience with people outside your socioeconomic class. (Or you do have that experience, but have drawn the wrong conclusions from it.) It is an obvious, proven fact that life is much harder for some people than for others.

Wisdom speaks. Hidden gem of this thread.