Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 96.

I am your host Noah Rochetta, and today I'm talking about problems.

Keep in mind you don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist.

You can use it to learn to be a better whatever you already are.

In this podcast episode I want to talk about problems.

And when we refer to problems, first of all I want to recognize that while we all have problems,

not all problems are equal. What we jokingly refer to as first world problems

may seem to be ridiculous when looked at from the perspective of someone who's not in a first world situation.

Maybe someone in a third world for example.

But the emotional suffering experienced during a so-called first world problem

can be just as real as any other form of mental anguish and any other given set of circumstances.

So I want to be careful as I address the idea of problems because I recognize that there are

different types of problems, but I don't want to make the mistake of categorizing these problems

and saying well your problem isn't as real or as valid as this other person's problem

because there's as worse than yours. I don't entirely agree with that line of thinking

because the truth is all of the emotions and the experiences that we have are real

regardless of the circumstances. So I wanted to kind of preface this a little bit with that line

and I'm sure you've all seen this or perhaps experienced this idea of first world problems.

You know someone on the airplane being upset because their seat won't go back or the Wi-Fi isn't working

or you know countless first world problems. That's pretty much all the problems that we experience

living in a first world country are first world problems. Several years ago I was working with

with someone. He had to make a quick stop to pick up some tickets for an upcoming football game I

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