The most common form of communication I bear witness to is complaint and various forms of derision. It took me 38 yrs to figure this out. At first I thought it was my particular circumstance. I’m a New Yorker and we complain a lot. So I moved from state to state, trying to land in a place where being positive (vs. being resilient) was the nom de geurre. It appears to me that place only exists in the heart of certain individuals and they are independent of location, even if they are influenced by it.
Mean people suck but complainers linger. I say this with no malice. In truth, I understand the need to unshoulder a load of personal misery. I’ve become one of the legion myself. As I look back at the 10 minute rule over the last few months I see a lot of short posts that remind me how much I’m battling the urge to unleash a wicked tirade of complaints upon the world. There is value in complaining. The catharsis of sharing your worldly ills with another person not only helps you get through it, but reminds you that there are others who are living less than perfect existences and in your shared disappointment lives a particular kinship. Yet complaining can be a high as well. You get hooked on the feeling of telling someone how shitty some person or situation is and you feel good about yourself—you feel above it—or maybe you feel a certain sense of relief in recognizing that someone understands what you are going through. Case and point: when I share about my cut up kid who keys my car and forgets his shoes and book bag for school, It warms my heart to hear a friend say, ‘yeah, I’ve been through that’. This is especially true if I know their kids are not presently incarcerated or 36 and still living at home and playing xbox all day. That kind of stuff gives me hope.
Too often hope is confounded with derisiveness, as if to feel good about your possible future you have to demolish the standing of those around you. This is a New York thing, but it isn’t only a New York thing. If people aren’t complaining about someone then they are generally talking smack about them. I am guilty of this as well—especially in situations where that individual has wronged me and I have no power to right the wrong. Again, catharsis. I understand why we do it. I see the need to do it. That doesn’t mean that it propels us all forward in any sustainable way; instead the act of demeaning and degrading others brings everyone down.
I want to live in a world where we can all be honest with each other and escape the petty confusions and competitions that fuel our mutually assured misery. I want to live in a world where the bottom line is, ‘how does what you are doing make us all better’. I want to live in a pipe dream, I suppose. Still, when we can put aside individual grievances and personal goals to reach a place where we can come to an amicable conclusion on any issue, that’s when I start to feel positive about the world I’m in.
10 minutes, out!