hrmmph
i don’t have a problem per-say with people and their complaints because complaining can be a constructive way to process out one’s problems or to begin to fix whatever issue is at hand. i admire protestors or political activists, feminists, labor unions, the daily show…
it’s just that most times lately in day to day interactions with people i can’t find the complaining constructive, and then it just becomes this weight that people pass around…. a cloud of negativity that one passes onto someone else. “this crap happened to me and so now i’ll tell you all about it so i’ll feel better and then you’ll have the crap to carry around.”
being that i suffer from a superhero complex, i would usually engage with people as they complain while i offer solutions to help resolve the problem and try to do something positive to help the situation, at least with people that i’m close to/care about etc.
lately however i haven’t been able to do that too well. i hear people’s complaints (even quite valid ones) and all i want to do is to change the subject or (this sounds bad) just walk away.
it’s not that tolerant of me and i know i’m being a not so good friend and a bad anthropologist when i do this but SEVERAL times in the last month i have point blank interrupted people when they are complaining about how much their life and or situation sucks. on three different occasions i pointed out the example of the woman that was shot in the face and then had a face-transplant, and said “your life isn’t that bad, look at the woman with the face-transplant.”
of course i’m probably just compensating for my lack of a support system to deal with my own problems but still there is a little bit of perspective that i find lacking from most complainers. i think that life IS what you make of it, and crappy situations are only really as bad as we want to make them out to be. there is kind of a lot of beauty in the world and a lot to be happy about. i just don’t want to waste my time focusing on all of the little imperfections and crappy, ugly things out there.
it’s just that most times lately in day to day interactions with people i can’t find the complaining constructive, and then it just becomes this weight that people pass around…. a cloud of negativity that one passes onto someone else. “this crap happened to me and so now i’ll tell you all about it so i’ll feel better and then you’ll have the crap to carry around.”
being that i suffer from a superhero complex, i would usually engage with people as they complain while i offer solutions to help resolve the problem and try to do something positive to help the situation, at least with people that i’m close to/care about etc.
lately however i haven’t been able to do that too well. i hear people’s complaints (even quite valid ones) and all i want to do is to change the subject or (this sounds bad) just walk away.
it’s not that tolerant of me and i know i’m being a not so good friend and a bad anthropologist when i do this but SEVERAL times in the last month i have point blank interrupted people when they are complaining about how much their life and or situation sucks. on three different occasions i pointed out the example of the woman that was shot in the face and then had a face-transplant, and said “your life isn’t that bad, look at the woman with the face-transplant.”
of course i’m probably just compensating for my lack of a support system to deal with my own problems but still there is a little bit of perspective that i find lacking from most complainers. i think that life IS what you make of it, and crappy situations are only really as bad as we want to make them out to be. there is kind of a lot of beauty in the world and a lot to be happy about. i just don’t want to waste my time focusing on all of the little imperfections and crappy, ugly things out there.