Tag: victim

The One Reason to Complain

Angry cat
Image from Pixabay

Complaining is mostly a toxic behaviour. Many of us can bear witness to the gloominess that washes over us when we’re in the company of a serial whiner—we’d tear down walls to escape the situation. Every self-righteous word seems to vanquish a little bit of your soul. Suggesting a fix for the thing being complained about is futile, because that isn’t the desired outcome. Incessant whiners just want to whine, making the mustering of our own empathy nigh on impossible. People of this kind are often infected with deep-seated bitterness—their lives don’t match their expectations, and instead of having the courage to fix what’s bothering them, they relinquish the responsibility and complain instead. It’s much easier, after all.Th

There’s lots of reasons that people complain, with most them being counterproductive to our mental health. For many of us, the hardest one to resist is physical pain. Hurting is horrible, and it comes with a tendency to vocalise the experience, whether it be groaning, grunting, or divulging to our partner in monotonous detail about every unpleasant sensation. Emotional pain is just as extreme, and carries similar effects. Others may grumble for its bonding power—many a friendship has been forged in the fires of Mount Gloom; our judging and whining is met with nodding heads, and we become a little bit closer. We simply can’t believe that so and so would do such an awful thing, and by stating this fact, we’re elevating ourselves above them, dismissing the possibility that we’d ever act in such an animalistic way. Nothing is more self-congratulatory than a high horse. We’re recruiting an army of like-minded whiners—together we can set this crooked world straight!

Being spoiled is another major factor. A hungover barista forgot to put chocolate sprinkles on our cappuccino, and we can’t find the words to express how much of an idiot he is. He has one job to do. Later on our flight is delayed by an hour, and it’s literally the worst thing to happen to anyone, ever. Never mind the fact that air travel is one of the greatest of human inventions, and we’re incredibly fortunate to have it. This type of spoiled demeanour is often paired with a lack of control, fuelled by our desire to direct everything so that it works out exactly as we want it to. The instant our expectations aren’t met, a complaint flies from our lips.

Uncomfortable silences can also act as complaint enticers. If you’re with friends and an extended spell of silence falls over the group, it’s common for someone to whine or gossip about something in order to extinguish the awkwardness, particularly for older people, who tend to mop up complaints like leftover gravy. Whining feels good—it’s infinitely preferable to the tension of silence. Every complaint strengthens the neural pathways dedicated to complaining, making the road more likely to be travelled. Before you know it, you could be a serial whiner.

So should complaining be avoided at all costs? Not entirely. We all experience strong negative feelings from time to time, and bottling them up isn’t a good strategy. You may be depressed about your tedious career, and need to talk about it with your partner. If we’re to retain our sanity, we absolutely must talk about such things. Our position the most important consideration— are we playing the role of the victim? The poor helpless individual who can’t get ahead in life no matter what we do? Or are we venting our frustrations in order to make things clearer to ourselves, and our partners? Are we having a conversation which leads us down the path to a solution? If you’re complaining about something and you have no desire to improve it (or it’s outside of your control), your whining will probably make you feel worse in the long run. The next time it pops into your head, you’ll be more likely to complain about it again, because you’ve trained yourself to do so. 

The next time you catch yourself opening your mouth to complain about something, you might want to consider your position. Do you actually want to fix what you’re whining about? Or are you just assuming the role of a whimpering victim? The difference is crucial.

“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.” 

Eckhart Tolle

Why Longing For The Weekend Can Make You Unhappy

Watching the clock

weekend-funny.jpgIllustration by Roberto Mangosi

It’s almost the weekend.

Those words can be heard from legions of employees across the globe, from colourless, drab offices, to arse-crack abundant construction sites. They’re often responded to with nodding, relieved heads, as though this week of miserable servitude has been more torturous than a spell at Auschwitz. Just one more day of the unassailable grind, and we’ll be blessed with meadow-prancing freedom.

It’s almost the weekend is another way of saying our lives are tough, and we need a break; a declaration that resonates for many people. Adult human life – with obligations to shelter, clothe and feed ourselves – can feel depressingly arduous, so the weekend becomes a highly anticipated hiatus in which we massage away the stresses of full-time employment. Weekends were invented for this reason, and help to keep us an acceptable amount of sane.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the respite of Saturday and Sunday, but the commonplace utterance of it’s almost the weekend, while seemingly innocuous, is a damaging attitude to take. Whenever we make this proclamation, or find ourselves on its receiving end, we’re openly stating that we’re displeased about the time we spend at work, and that we cannot wait for it to be over. While this may be true, it’s reinforcing the idea that employment is something to be avoided at all costs, further tarnishing our attitude towards a mandatory practice in which we’ll spend the majority of our time on Earth. The more we whine about something, the worse it becomes in our minds. It’s almost the weekend is just a sorrowful, victim-like whinge, which serves to strengthen the idea that employment is an abomination, and that we should all be able to live in the woods like daisy-wielding, unwashed hippies. Until the boffins of this world construct super-robots who can safely do our bidding, or unless you’ve decided to spend your life shamelessly sponging off the government, work isn’t going anywhere soon. The woeful sufferer who oozes it’s almost the weekend commands respect from nobody, themselves least of all. It’s a defensive, miserable attitude in which life just isn’t fair.

You might have a truly dreadful job, or work in a toxic environment with psychotic, scarlett-faced managers who would remedy you with a cane if they could. If you’re in fortunate enough circumstances, dusting off your CV is an obvious response to hating your work. It’s certainly easier to be a forlorn coward, continuing on with your sorrowful employment while meekly declaring that it’s almost the weekend, but this does nothing to better your situation.

If you have responsibilities that forbid you from finding superior employment, or are restricted to a tiny pool of jobs, then for the time being the situation is out of your control. Similarly to those with fewer restrictions, dismal utterances of it’s almost the weekend are doing nothing but reinforcing your role as a deplorable victim, whose sufferings are worsened by the role you’ve assumed.

It’s almost the weekend is a desire to escape from your life, to flee from an uncomfortable situation instead of valiantly confronting it. We can learn a great deal from pain and discomfort; taking flight the moment it appears is relinquishing an opportunity for personal growth, in which valuable lessons may be unearthed. Railing against wretched situations (such as abuse) is required in order to effect change, but most of the time it’s better to say yes to the happenings of our lives. Escapism is an outright rejection of the present moment, the eternally ongoing instant in which we all live. It’s almost the weekend is a futile attempt to break away from the inescapable now, into a future that only exists as an ethereal concept in our brains. While there’s nothing wrong with occasionally looking forward to something, consistent mental projections of the future, and how grand it would be when we finally have some relief from the difficulties of the present, is no existence at all. It’s wishing our lives away until we finally reach our expiration date, at which point we might wonder why the hell we didn’t actually live.

“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.” —Alan Watts

In addition to dragging you downwards, it’s almost the weekend is dreadfully boring. You could be asking your colleagues about their weekend away with their family, or harmlessly teasing them about their obvious coffee addiction. Whining about the fact that it’s almost the weekend will earn you few friends, which are a commodity more valuable than gold.

Surviving can be tough; we all have to earn our keep. There’s a choice to make when it comes to our mandatory employment – bristle and complain about it with utterances of it’s almost the weekend, escaping into a future that doesn’t technically exist, or face your hardships head on with heroic courage and fortitude. Only the latter can bolster your chances of happiness and fulfilment.

The hero – the ultimate weapon against suffering

Aragorn on horse

aragorn-on-horse.jpg

“Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.” —George Orwell

If every experience, thought and emotion of a person were to be compiled into an extensive catalogue of their life, a large portion of it would probably be tagged with the word suffering. It’s an indelibly human experience – frequent, painful, and inescapable. Our brows are often knitted in frustration, mouths curled into a grimace, and muscles uncomfortably tense, as if preparing for an attack.

Your narcissistic, impish boss might be the source of your suffering, as his eyes slowly narrow into contemptuous slits during conversation. Perhaps you’re hopelessly fastened to a blob-like lifestyle, in which fried potato comfortably and regularly defeats fibrous vegetables. Maybe you’re slowly and reluctantly realising that you married the wrong person.

Unless you want to renounce your life and introduce your neck to a homemade noose, suffering is here to stay. And if it can’t be expelled, we’d better learn how to handle it.

As it turns out, suffering itself isn’t the problem, but our judgment of it. We suffer, and then we suffer some more because we can’t help but bitch and whine about it, exacerbating the original problem. This preposterous, habitual reaction to suffering is attributed to much of the world’s emotional pain – a form of insidious, repetitive self-harm. It’s like accidentally cutting yourself in the kitchen and then intentionally wedging the knife into the wound afterwards. A witness to this behaviour would swiftly sit you down for a chat about the demons inhabiting your soul.

There’s two fundamental roles that can be assumed in relation to suffering – two standpoints that we can assume. The first is the victim.

The victim

The victim is a doleful character for which life just isn’t fair. Nobody deserves the pain that they experience – them least of all. A disproportionate share of misery has wound a path to them; all signposts for anguish point in their direction. If they picked winning lottery numbers, they’d probably put their ticket through the wash.

Life as a victim is tragically debilitating – every ounce of energy is wasted on complaint, with feeble weakness as the result. Exertion is taxing and undesirable. It’s much easier to complain about something than it is to actually change it. The voice of a victim has an unmistakable whiney quality, as though all traces of bassy substance has been filtered out, resulting in a spiritless, barely noticeable, irritating noise.

If faith in the almighty is their thing, they might be left wondering why they’re being so woefully punished. Even Jesus himself couldn’t have been the recipient of such devlish torment. Perhaps a visit to the local church will do the trick.

The victim’s lengthy role has instilled them with an unshakeable hostility towards life, which has treated them appallingly and must be responded to in a similar fashion. They’re as hostile as rabid hounds, and as bitter as raw coffee beans.

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.” — Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

If being a victim sounds horrible to you, then you might consider strapping on your armour, unsheathing your glistening sword, and assuming the role of a much more agreeable character: the hero.

The hero

The hero suffers the same amount as the victim, but chooses a much more advantageous stance. They understand that pain is inevitable, to be faced head-on with jutted chest, wide-set feet, and hands on hips. Suffering is still unsavoury and arduous, yet tolerated with admirable courage and hulk-like strength.

Fortitude is a chief characteristic of the hero, forged from years of leaning into suffering. Unlike the victim, for which suffering is cruel and undeserved, the hero understands that pain is a great teacher; an alchemist for an enlightened soul.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” —Kahlil Gibran

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”— John Keats

The hero wouldn’t be caught dead casting aspersions on life, like pitiful martyrs. They know that suffering has the potential to mould them into something better, something durable, superbly tenacious, and with a shadow that darkens entire neighbourhoods.

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” —Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Like the hero of Dante’s Inferno, they recognise that the way out of hell lies at its centre – only by fully experiencing pain can we escape it. Complaining only strengthens the potency of suffering. Life is a rip-roaring adventure, bursting with colourful jubilation and dreary sorrow, with all of it valuable.

**

Life is suffering, but the intensity and duration is defined by the stance that we choose to take. We can be helpless victims, whining our way through life with shrivelled voices, suffused with crippling anxiety. Or we can be courageous heroes, standing Hercules-like against our pain, with every laceration amplifying the robustness of our character.

The choice is yours.

“The fact is that we’ve all been hurt, and we’re all wounded, but not all of us are mean. Why not? Because some people realize that their history of suffering can be a hero’s saga rather than a victim’s whine” —Martha Beck