[garply]

"Seeing poverty up-close will annihilate any Westerner's malaise. It's suddenly very, very hard to get into a funk about your career when you're watching a family live on $2/day."

I wish I could upvote this comment more. Throughout my teenage years and early 20's, I had serious problems with depression and existential angst. Then I lived in China and witnessed firsthand the relative poverty that most of humanity lives in.

I realized how absolutely silly and trivial most of the problems we well-to-do Westerners think we have are. It changed my life - I am a much happier, calmer, and more stable person for it.