good point Byz.. my personal philo is that life is a very, very long wait unless you do something with it.

JLYI... read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. If you have trouble with it, pm me and/or Byz... i know i'd be happy to help with it.

one thing he says that we should all keep in mind is that suffering is like a gas, it fills the room evenly. So each person feels their own personal suffering equally, regardless of degree. One person's pain is equal to another internally, whether externally we measure them as equal. This means that a person who suffers because they are disgusted or disappointed with how they look may well be suffering equally with the person who is in chronic pain and hasn't got a place to call home.

having said that... it is very, very true that the way to feel happier is to stop staring into your sadness quite as much. "When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears." There are always things for which to be grateful, right up until the moment you die. Always.

Do the positives equal the negatives? Often not, but in my own humble opinion, joy or happiness is worth a thousand times it's "equal" in the negative range.

It is tricky what i am about to say, because it's hard to find the fine line... you need to acknowledge your own pain and problems, but do so in an accurate and analytical way. Weigh them out in terms of what they really mean vs what they mean to you. Big difference there. Give yourself permission to feel disappointed in not getting what you'd wanted in life so far, be kind to yourself if you feel so bad. It's ok to feel whatever you feel. No lie. The trick is in not living that feeling. So, in the end, the idea of others having it "worse" isn't worded quite right... but yes, taking a cold, hard look at what you have that is positive vs what others struggle with is a deeply valuable lesson if you are open to learning it.

i am taking great pains here to emphasize that it isn't the same as saying you have no right to complain or feel bad. We all have those rights. i can feel bad about anything, but i don't want that feeling to run my life.

make a list of the things that are not bad for you... you're on a computer, you can read and write, you have people here trying to communicate with you and help you, you are alive... and yes, that you don't have cancer and weren't born in darfur. If you could really go to darfur this would seem like more of a blessing to you than it currently does.

i get to feeling like you are saying sometimes... for other reasons. i get to feeling cheated. i just had major surgery to remove tumors. And do you know what really, really upsets me most days? The edema makes me look fat. Those are the days when i forget how that foot-long incision felt and how humbled i felt trying to do the simplest of tasks afterward.

now... i'm not saying any of that to have some kind of show down here. Not at all. i believe your pain is real and deep and you suffer. What i am saying is that i felt the same... and sometimes it comes back, but i found release from it in becoming deeply grateful for what i have.

please try to find ways to look at what good there is in your world.

the other thing is that where exactly are you getting this rule book for life that you seem to be gaining these expectations from? Go to a mall and people watch. Look around you. Yeah, you sound a bit shorter than the average american male (assuming you're american) but where did you get the idea that there is this ideal life out there that others got and you didn't?

there are precious few people living any kind of ideal reality... most of us have big hurdles and burdens and didn't get the perfect life. The people who have what you envy very likely have many things you would not envy at all. There isn't a rule anywhere that says you are "supposed" to be happy for that matter... that part is more of a choice than you might realize.

oh.. i'm adding this... one other thing Frankl says that is important... he says that we should not be asking what we want from life, but what life wants from us. He poses the question of how to answer "yes" to life. If you can begin to see life as something to which you are indebted and not something that "owes" you, perhaps you can find ways to see things more positively.

peace