Is suffering relative?

Is it possible that I've "suffered" enough? Has the universe decided to decrease the tension on the rack a notch or two for now? Too soon to say amigos, but keep your fingers crossed will you?

I flinch as I write this, look at me sawing away at the violin strings of my own privileged hardship... Especially having just seen the offensively-slick Blood Diamond, and knowing what those child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Rwanda went through (and still are to some extent in smaller numbers). How dare I!

I waiver on what I call The Transitive Proportion of Suffering Capacity. Is a hangnail in Beverly Hills proportionately equal to having your arms cut off in Africa? Before you lick the envelope on your letter bombs, what I'm asking is this: is the intensity of an individual's suffering relative to their life experience? Is suffering relative or is suffering more of a fixed scale, the extremes of which only a few humans will ever get to know? There are convincing arguments in both directions.

("Stickes" photo of Rwandan war child w. makeshift stitches by Neil Abramson)