Keep it in perspective

I think that this music video is good, but not great.  The delivery is pretty heavy-handed and some of the attempts to juxtapose the experiences of the two children could have been much more powerful and effective.  Also, I’m curious whether or not the “kid from an unnamed country ‘over there,’” is authentic or if his sequences are “dramatizations.”  Not that it REALLY matters, but on some level I think it would detract from the video if they weren’t “real.”  If they ARE real, I wonder how much that kid and his family got paid to be in the video…

Anyway, that’s a little bit off-topic.  Despite these criticisms, I actually appreciated the video.  However, what I took away from it had relatively little to do with the abstract message of “some things cost more than you realize.”  I actually think that it does a much better job of reminding people to try and keep their lives in perspective.

I find this message to be particularly timely for me these days as I deal with a fairly slow job-hunting process.  A lot of people have expressed sympathy for that situation and have been surprised when I try to tell them that I’m really not that stressed out by it.  I like to think that this is because I do a pretty good job of not losing sight of the fact that things could really be much, much, more difficult.

So for me, this video was most effective as a reminder that, instead of wallowing in self-pity when things don’t go my way, I should try to be thankful for the fact that I’m not struggling merely to survive in soul-crushing squalor, as do many people around the world.  Just, try to keep it all in perspective, you know?