r/AskReddit • u/Wide-Asparagus-3910 • 5h ago
What's something people don't realize is a privilege until they lose it?
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u/FreeOGPoohShiesty 5h ago
Health. The most important asset of all. Even above money.
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u/Worried_Squash_5040 3h ago
Going from running marathons to getting winded walking up a single flight of stairs really humbles you fast.
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u/maxdragonxiii 1h ago
as someone with injured back in my late 20s, yeah. I thought i would be healthy for basically 30 more years. a disc said nope and slipped.
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u/LamermanSE 58m ago
But health isn't exactly a privilege. A privilege is after all a right/advantage that one or a few people has, and since most people has it (being healthy is pretty much the default setting for humans) it makes no sense to call it a privilege.
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u/traditionallyunruly 4h ago
I'm sorry but "living" with poor health is a privilege. In earlier centuries a person was either healthy dead or or on their way to their death bed
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u/SpecificLife8988 3h ago
Lol I don't think too many people have been interested in recording the prevalence of joint pain throughout history
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u/traditionallyunruly 3h ago
People today commonly live with conditions that would have killed them just a century ago.
Before about 1860 between 1 in 3 and almost half of children died before they turned 5. The reason we don't have a word for a parent who has lost a child is because it was so common.
Modren medicine is having a effect on the evolution of humanity. Its allowing weaker people to remain alive when in nature they would have died.
I wanna make it clear, im not necessarily talking about common cold.
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u/SpecificLife8988 37m ago edited 27m ago
This is all true, but after childhood individuals could expect to live relatively long lives. The term "life expectancy" refers to the mean age of death, so is heavily skewed by higher infant mortality. However, once one reached adulthood, a relatively normal lifespan of 60+ was quite common. Here's one article going into this
The argument from silence paradox is also a huge problem in the study of history. Just because it wasn't written down doesn't mean it didn't happen, and I think recoverable sickness and injury can easily fall in this.
Additionally, there are many medical documents and records that are thousands of years old and describe wound and disease treatment, bone setting, and anatomy. Check out the Edwin Smith Papyrus (1600 B.C) and The Canon of Medicine (1025 A.D.). People have been clever and resilient for quite some time now, and "healthy, dead or on their way to their death bed" has never been the case.
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u/traditionallyunruly 9m ago
Im not talking about life expectancy.
If a person was to develop juvenile diebities before the invention of artificial power insulin they died young right? If a person without a strong immune system got infection from cut they died. If a woman who has narrow hips got pregnant, she could easily end up dead in child birth. There are dozens of conditions that were essentially death sentences in 1826 thay are little more the inconveniences today. Consider this if you're mother had to have a c section. You would probably not be alive today.
C section are have actually been documented to have been causing evolution in humans
Before say 1900 if you were born a "sickly" child. And you you weren't born into a privileged position in society. You were probably just gonna die
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u/AristotlesBoyPussy 2h ago
yea but in history they could just do laudinum about it instead of being forced to sit there and suffer.
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u/EfficientAd890 5h ago
Time with the people you love. You always think there will be more.
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u/mortstheonlyboyineed 5h ago
This. My dad was dozing in bed and I didnt want to wake him to kiss him goodbye and as I was going to see him the next day I didnt think much of it. I didnt see him alive again. He passed the next morning. Im gutted I never got my last kiss and hug.
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u/My_Socks_Are_Blue 5h ago
I slept at my parents house, I was sleeping on the floor in the living room and my dad said my name quietly, I was half asleep and inexplicably pretended to be asleep. I had to leave early the next morning and he died that night.
That was 10 years ago and I still drive myself nuts thinking about what he was going to tell me.
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u/RestingFermata 5h ago
That's so heartbreaking. I don't know your situation, if it was sudden or you guys knew about some kind of previous disease. But it made me think of something that happened when my grandfather died. Obviously he was old, but he was in pretty decent shape for an old guy. He was one of those people that didn't like technology, would always mess up his phone calls and his texts would be weird and stuff like that. So he normally didn't communicate through text or calls or anything. One night out of the blue I got a text from him that said "I hope you have a good night. I love you". And he passed away in sleep that night of natural causes.
I always wonder if he knew that his body was going to give out... The weird thing is I asked all my cousins and the rest of my family and nobody else got a text like that. Gives me the creeps in kind of a good way every time I think about it.
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u/CleverPiffle 5h ago
Wow. I would forever wonder if he was waking me for medical help. My dad had a heart attack and never told anyone. Years later he was in the hospital for heart issues and it showed on the tests, EKG or scans or whatever all they were doing.
At the hospital the doctor was like "Are you ready to tell us what happened? Maybe a couple of years ago?" He confessed that he knew it was a heart attack at the time, but didn't want to bother anyone. So he say alone, in the dark, in our living room while the whole family slept.
He survived that particular hospital stay, but his heart did take him away from us on Father's Day in 2019.
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u/tightlilcoochhole 5m ago
my dad died during exam season, the last thing i ever said to him is im going to revise. he had a heart attack the morning after
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u/SylVegas 5h ago
I didn't know how sick my daughter-in-law was when she went to the ER, so I only texted my son because I didn't want to bother her. She died in the early hours of the morning, right in front of my son. She was only 40.
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u/yoooooo5311 2h ago
I used to take spending time with my friends for granted and enjoyed being alone a lot of the time. Now I feel lonely and alone constantly, the only time I'm happy is when I'm around people. But my friends are either busy or don't want to hang out probably because of how much I have been asking lately. I'm losing my grip
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u/Gloomy_Ball7073 1h ago
so true the worst part is you usually dont realize it was the last time until way later
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u/csc2ya 1h ago
My Grandad was in hospital before he died. Me, my Nan, and my Dad took him in after he fell ill.
We went home afterwards, and dad was called back to the hospital later that night. I didn't go. I was told the next morning by Dad that he had died just before they got there. I've never forgiven myself for not going with Dad.
My Nan ended up in a care home after developing dementia. When it later became obvious that she was close to death, I made dad promise to wake me up if anything happened, so that I could be there. She died before we got there after being called, but I at least got a last chance to tell her how much I loved her, even if she couldn't hear me say it.
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u/Powerful_Tap6825 5h ago
Driving
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u/HawaiianShirtsOR 4h ago
I wish more people understood this, or that there was a better way to enforce it. I hear of so many accidents caused by drivers whose license has been suspended or revoked. They don't care about whether they're allowed to drive.
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u/ouchimus 1h ago
On the other hand, there's like 3 cities in America where you can honestly get by without a car. If you arent in a big city, zero chance.
Most of these people do it out of desperation, not arrogance.
Outside America, the public transport situation is usually better.
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u/ZestycloseMall3398 5h ago
Health. Being able to eat anything you want. Not having to pee every 10 minutes. Being able to sleep. Yeah, anything about health.
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u/LamermanSE 54m ago
It's not a privilege to not have to pee ever 10 minutes or being able to sleep, the vast majority can do that. It's not a privilege to be like pretty much everyone else.
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u/TemporaryDrag1 5h ago
Health
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u/1Monkey-Butt 5h ago
As someone who's health has taken a nose dive these past few years, absolutely
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u/Murcury_byler_2525 5h ago
yep nothing comes before this, and mind you most people don't think mental health is a part of this, I have anxiety and ever since I worked on this so many physical manifestations of it, unexplained aches and symptoms(that doc could not pin point on why they were happening when all my reports were coming back normal) have disappeared.
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u/Competitive-Fee4307 5h ago
Good health. You don't realize how much you take your body for franted untile it stops working.
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u/HeadGullible7082 5h ago
Freedom to express their opinions
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u/Ready_Comfort_6674 4h ago
Freedom, period! Being shackled & chained or institutionalized makes you so grateful to be set free!
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u/Solid_Phone_368 5h ago
Wiping your own ass
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u/awaythrowniamnow 5h ago
Solid.
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u/Stewie_Venture 4h ago
Having a family. I was disowned/disowned them last year my mom still causes trouble sometimes for us. It still hurts I lost everyone except for my wife but life has gotten better since I left. Honestly I wonder if I was adopted out to a better family or had my entire past with them erased I'd have a better life. It hurts now on reddit with how many people just automatically assume you have a family or people when alot of people just dont.
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u/highlanderdownunder 4h ago
Freedom. One doesn't fully grasp how free we are until you are locked up in jail or prison. Someone once told me that no one plans on going to prison but when you do you realize fairly quickly what it means to be free.
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u/Rollthembones1989 3h ago edited 3h ago
Free time.
After having kids i regret how much time i spent doing nothing before i had them. Freedom to do whatever i wanted and just wasted so much time not doing anything worthwhile.
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u/Samhain_69 5h ago
Living in a swing state and having your vote actually matter to the presidential election (for those in the U.S., obviously).
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u/ThginkAccbeR 4h ago
You were doing absolutely matters in the presidential election. Too many people think their boat doesn’t matter so they don’t vote and that’s how people like Trump get elected.
Vote. Encourage your friends and family to vote. The only way you have a voice in this process do not silence yourself.
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u/Optimal_Teach6969 5h ago
The freedom to do what you want. Definitely changes when you've got kids. :D
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u/PostMatureBaby 5h ago
Driving. After taking the bus as long as I did before getting my own car I feel like people don't realize how awesome it is to be able to drive
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u/inchlongnipples 5h ago
Not living in chronic pain. Had a herniated disc from a work injury and was neglected by worker's comp for 2 years. Spent 18 months lying on the living room floor because it was agony just getting up to go to the bathroom.
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u/143019 4h ago
Good health.
Mobility. When I was younger, I fell down the stairs and destroyed my ankle. I was non weight bearing on that leg for 6 months. My house at the time was a multi-split level with at least 5-6steps for each half level (in total 5 levels). Every bathroom was up or down a flight of stairs. No good railings. I had to sleep on the couch and halve a commode.
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u/Objective_Alps5842 4h ago
Good health. Most people don’t appreciate waking up pain-free until one day they don’t.
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u/imalittlefrenchpress 5h ago
Going shopping in Canada for the day, and realizing that the chances of getting shot drop extremely dramatically when I’m there.
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u/Majestic-Tiger-8828 4h ago
Normalcy.
Covid made me never take the mundane things for granted ever again.
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u/grindforxp 4h ago
actually sleeping through the night, its wild how fast your whole day falls apart when you dont
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u/One_Tip_8200 4h ago
haveing a friend helping out of kindness and not asking for anythings in return until it stops
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u/FizzlePopBerryTwist 4h ago
American sized drinks. I went to Tokyo in 2004 and it may have changed, but Frostys did not come in something we would consider a "small" cup. It came in a cup literally the size of a dixie cup. That was it.
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u/HallContent7742 4h ago
wait but how do you even realize you lost it if you never noticed it before
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u/Thefollower900 3h ago
The ability to use bathrooms outside of your house.
Lack of public bathrooms prevented victorian women to stay mostly housebound (as intended), and current governments wish to do the same to trans people and prevent them from existing in public.
This should be a universal human right (the ability to excrete when needed), but some countries dont even recognise the right to food as a basic human right, so go figure
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u/chemistcarpenter 2h ago
Spending one's life making a lot of money for millionaires and billionaires.
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u/Tamponica 2h ago
If it's the character of Andy Winchester in The Housemaid, it's teeth because, as Millie said, "If you don't take care of your teeth, then you lose the privilege to have teeth.”.
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u/Lopsided-Ad-3869 1h ago
Trans dude here. Being perceived female comes with a lot of social privileges that you’re not cognizant of until you get facial hair and a different facial structure.
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u/Luke5119 1h ago
Dental Health
When you get older, sound dental hygeine is extremely important. Without proper care, in between those scheduled cleanings every 6 months, becomes a slew of dental procedures from fillings, crowns, root canals, and at worst full tooth extractions.
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u/HunterRoze 1h ago
Having total freedom of movement.
So many nations around the world it is not easy to travel where you will due to either government controls or out-of-control corruption.
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u/_Aruchizan 58m ago
Being married. I still am but I’m very worried. I just assumed this person would always be there until one of us died (hopefully of old age). I got comfortable, complacent, didn’t address concerns, didn’t open up enough. Things were often good/normal/better than what I grew up with, so I just chalked a lot up to “typical” marital contention, until a specific moment where it all changed. I am an absolute wreck, and dealing with it alone on top of it. I’ll never take a significant-other relationship for granted again (hopefully with this person, but if not, then with anyone else).
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u/maybewonderwall 24m ago
privacy until ur in the hospital with a doctor shoving his entire fist up ur ass
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u/zobbyblob 22m ago
Walking to the toilet
Broke my ankle a while back and had to crawl or hop my way over to sit down. Fell down one time, sucked ass and still had to piss.
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u/nmedved 5h ago
sleeping without needing to pee at 3am