Days before typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, I was having a hard time trying to manage all my academic and extra-curricular responsibilities. That week was probably the worst week that I’ve had since starting university. There wasn’t an hour during that week when I wasn’t feeling stressed out or anxious. I truly felt like I had too much on my plate. I blame a lethal combination of insurmountable amount of work, poor time management, and lack of sleep.

On Monday of that same week, I only had an hour of sleep because I had to redo a research proposal eight hours before it was due. On Tuesday, I slept late again because I spent eight painful hours solving WebWork problems (seriously, why must they be so time consuming?) Then, on Wednesday night, I tried studying for my math midterm but my sleep-deprived brain could not focus at all. So I decided I would just sleep early so I could wake up early in the morning to study. Not so surprisingly, I woke up two hours later than I was supposed to. When I realized that the sun was already out and I hadn’t studied anything yet, I knew I had to finally get out of my damn bed.

So I used the (insufficient) time that I had to study as much as I could. Man, writing that Math midterm felt like going to war weaponless. 90% of the time I had no clue what I was doing. What sucks is that I totally thought I would do better on that second midterm than I did on the first one (because really, after writing my first Math midterm, I thought it would take a huge miracle to do worse on the second one. Well…. miracles truly happen, I guess). So after not being able to write several papers as eloquently as I planned to, to study for midterms as much as I intended to, and to spend as much time on my priorities as I wanted to, I went home that night feeling so incapable. It was just one of those nights when I felt like nothing was going my way.

On Friday afternoon (still feeling down and terribly upset), while on the bus going home, I checked Twitter on my mobile phone to make the one-hour commute more bearable. As I was scrolling through my timeline, I saw this tweet:

 

Later that night, most of my friends in the Philippines were retweeting this picture of Tacloban City–the city that was hit the hardest by typhoon Haiyan–before and during the storm surge:

The next day, pictures and videos of typhoon Haiyan’s wrath were shown on CNN. Since all means of communication were still down in the city, survivors of the typhoon were interviewed and given the chance to relay important messages to people they needed to contact. Most of them enumerated the full names of their missing loved ones and asked the government for help in finding them. Some survivors couldn’t help but cry as they tried to tell their relatives living outside Tacloban City that their loved ones were now dead. I even watched one survivor tell his relatives in Metro Manila that he was very sorry that he was not able to save his children’s lives. Disappointment, pain, and longing were written all over his crying face.

That was when it hit me: there I was feeling like the whole weight of the world was on my shoulders when, in reality, I was upset over ridiculously trivial things. Sure, high grades are important as they will help me earn a degree, which could increase my chances of landing my dream job. But does a single Math midterm define who I am? Would not getting an A in an essay steal my dreams from me? NO. Man, I felt so sorry for being terribly frustrated by such trivial things when in the other side of the world, thousands of people are trying to cope up with the fact  that their loved ones are missing or are now dead.

Now and then, I have to remind myself that other people have it worse. I have to remind myself this not to find joy in the suffering of others, but to stop myself from worrying about inconsequential matters. I am not saying that I should ignore my problems just because they seem so trivial compared to those of others. I know that all problems are different, and each person experiences them differently. Hence, no problem is too big or too insignificant. But telling myself that there are people who are in worse situations than I am reminds me that the positive things in my life still far outweigh the negative ones. I am truly blessed, and I should not let insignificant things stop me from always knowing that.

To the victims and survivors of typhoon Haiyan, I cannot imagine the pain and suffering you are currently going through. Your courage and strength amidst this terrible catastrophe serve as an inspiration to many people. Please know that you are not alone during this tragic time.