I am conducting an experiment in post-Vermont tranquility: no more complaining.
I don’t think it will be very hard, as I’m not really a complainer by nature.
Wait, let me phrase that a little more carefully so it’s not used against me in the future.
I’m not an idle complainer. I don’t see much point in deriding what I don’t have the will or want to change, unless of course I’m doing it under the guise of writing scathing critique for our collective entertainment. Otherwise, I’m usually much more focused on what I can do and improve on my own than concentrating on what the people around me or doing wrong.
Yet, lately I find I have plenty of idle complaints about the world around me. People not trying hard enough, not working as a team, complaining too much. Complaining about others complaining too much! What if they complain about my complaining too? It’s like an Ouroboros on Scully’s back, swallowing itself again and again.
That’s not me. It makes me unhappy, and I feel unlike myself.
So here is my proposal for myself and all of you. We stop making complaints. Period. I don’t care if its about waiting in line, or that annoying thing your partner does in the kitchen, or the one thing that drives you the craziest in the entire world. Complaining connotes something having power over us, like telling it our true name.
Inside, I’m going to issue improvements. Corrections. Fixes. Every time I want to idly bitch about something that’s wrong, instead I am going to turn it into something that’s right.
Either that, or write a very scathing critique of it.
alison says
I knew what that photo was from before I even read your post. X-Philes, UNITE!