World Trade, Literally

circa
Exactly who is offering the world as a trade? Whomever it is, you’d think they would have given up by now. No one seems willing to take that offer. Not even the people that have the worst things for trade. “My life sucks, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”; “Some days, I wish I’d never had kids, but I wouldn’t trade them for the world.”; “My crippling anxiety has left me with no friends and no money--I’m barely alive, and miserable every passing second--but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.” Good. No one actually wants to give you the world as trade for your crappy stuff. 
It’s like one giant, imaginary swap-meet where everyone has brought their checkered history and emotional baggage, and one person is walking around offering the world as a trade. When someone declines the trade, that same someone is compelled to tell anyone within earshot that they had been offered the world in exchange for their refuse, gathered over a lifetime, but declined.

 It could be a very precarious trade, though. In the sense of the societal world, declining that trade would be the only way to go. Why would anyone trade their problems for real problems? I’m single, occasionally lonely, and it’s no fun, but why would I want to trade that very minute trial for the trials of the entire world’s single, occasionally lonely people? Why would the parent with the most rebellious teenager of their community trade that one for the rest of the teenagers exactly like that throughout the world? It would be a madhouse if all of the world’s problems were to be handled by the one person that made such an erroneous trade. That unwise sod wouldn’t live longer than two minutes, if they were lucky. The stress, alone, would make their soft-tissue sink beneath their bones and they’d die an unrecognizable pile of the ignorant whiner they once were. What a relief for them!

 If someone is offering you the world in exchange for what you’re complaining about being reluctantly grateful, make sure you understand the details of the offer. If the offer is the celestial body we call home, that would be a decent trade--assuming you suddenly get supernatural powers with which to control what happens therein; if it’s the whole of humanity, though, consider the millions of people that have it way worse than you. Either way, remember not to make the trade.

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