On Feeling Sorry for Ourselves

A little less than a century ago Emerson offered this observation: “These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike.”
The statement may seem somewhat oversimplified, but the very fact of its having been said suggests that in some things all times have some essentials that are the same. In all times people are most impressed with their own problems; in all times people see the uncertainties and the difficulties of their own day.
Sometimes in feeling somewhat sorry for ourselves we may suppose that there might have been a better time to live. But if we were to make a long list of what we have and of what others have had, of the evils of our own time and of others, or the opportunities of our won time and others⎯if we were to take an inventory of any period of the past and compare it with the present and see what we would have to give up to go back, it isn’t so certain that we should have as much cause to feel sorry for ourselves as is sometimes supposed.
There is no doubt that we are better off in material matters, in conveniences and comforts, than we would have been at other time and places and periods. But even as to other essentials also, as to the opportunity for living a full and free life, it isn’t at all assured that we would want to go back. We could itemize a long list of reasons why, but in short let it be said that so far as we are aware, there never was an untried, untroubled utopia. (There was a serpent who entered even in Eden.)
But even if there were a better time to live, it is not now, and there is no point wasting life waiting for something that might have been yesterday or that may be tomorrow. Any man who ever lived could have found fault with his own time, and many of those whom we admire most and who have done most for mankind lived lives of difficulty and succeeded despite the difficulties of their own day. (Fortunately, some of them didn’t know that there were some things that couldn’t be done and so did them anyway⎯which may suggest an approach to the solving of some of our own problems.)
It is our opportunity to live now, and one of the last things we should do is to feel sorry for ourselves, because even if we had the opportunity to change everything we have and are, we probably wouldn’t willingly change places, all in all, with any period of the past⎯even though there are many things we should like to improve in the present.