Your pain does not diminish the pain of another. Your fears do not negate your friend’s concerns. The memories of your history do not lessen the challenges of someone else’s present.

Compassion does not mean telling someone else that you’ve had it worse.

For college students at this time of year, it’s easy to become wrapped in a bubble of your own stress and deadlines. Major projects are approaching. Those “easy ‘A’” classes have suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Students are determining next semester’s stress levels, worries, and challenges with a click of the “Register Now” button for their classes on Buff Advisor. And after finding out midterm grades, students are wondering whether or not to drop their most difficult courses by the Monday deadline (you’re welcome for the reminder).

Worst of all, students must make themselves face the all-dreaded question: “What am I doing with the rest of my life?”

However, we at The Prairie encourage you, the community of West Texas A&M University, to care about others’ problems even when they seem small compared to your own. The fact that other people are in another stage of life than you does not mean that their problems are less significant.

Students have various personalities, strengths, and weaknesses: These are what make each individual unique but are also what cause different obstacles for different people. While the freshman pre-med student aces the biology exam, the math genius who got stuck in a class for biology majors may be failing—and that’s okay. As an anonymous person once said, “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

The phrase, “If you think you have it bad now, wait until…” grates on the ears. It implies both that the person’s challenges are insignificant and that he or she is wrong to struggle. Few people would believe that a small child was unintelligent simply because he had not yet learned to tie his shoe; while adults can easily tie their shoes now, they remember that it was once a difficult lesson to learn. However, a college senior may be prone to tell a sophomore that they “have it easy.” While problems may seem simple in hindsight, they are rarely a piece of cake for the person currently involved in them. The fact that someone else has not had the same experiences as another does not decrease that person’s potential.

The next time that you hear a derision such as, “You think your life is hard?” or “I would kill for a life like yours,” remember that we all have different potential levels, pasts, personalities and beliefs that dictate the way in which we perceive situations. Your comfort zone could be someone else’s uncharted territory—so choose to lift one another up in their weaknesses, and refuse to pass judgment on the way someone else faces their hardships.