Would you complain about gravity?

The last 2 months I was living with an extraordinary English flatmate. Most English people I met so far are not really interested in the fate of their country or their society as long as it doesn’t concern their own well-being. International students usually joke that everything is fine in England as long as the pubs are open. Expect riots if they close them though! My flatmate is different: He complains.

The two of us were working in the same office and therefore we usually went to have lunch at home together. The college where we are staying at the moment is about 10-15 minutes from our office and we usually talk about something while walking home. We both are people, who are interested in what goes on in our society, so every day we would end up talking about the pensions not being safe, about English bureaucracy or maybe about environmental issues. In two months we never ran out of things to discuss, because we care. In fact I found these conversations to be refreshing, because an English complainer is a somewhat new phenomenon to me and I only know the attitude of German complainers – they actually do complain a lot, mostly about things they cannot control.

I have to admit that I used these last 2 months for a little research of my own, well, let’s call it a little self experiment: For one month I kept a little promise to myself that I would not complain about anything. I allowed myself to give statements about the situation, but emotional involvement was not allowed. This means that I could say “The kitchen is a mess”, but I couldn’t say “I hate that the kitchen is a mess”. I wanted to find out what it meant to not complain about things, to not care about these things that usually annoy me a lot.

For this one month my situation was exactly the same as it was in the month where I was allowed to complain. The kitchen almost always was a mess, the cleaners were always slamming the door early in the morning and the weather was consistently bad. Of course this is not a proper scientific experiment though, but just a little introspection of how I felt while I was complaining and while I was not complaining.

In the month when I was allowed to complain I had quite some rants about the cleaners who always slam the door at 7 am in the morning. I spent quite some time being angry. It stressed me out and it gave my day not only a bad start, but it stayed bad, because I spent so much time thinking about something that is negative. At lunch time my flatmate and me would have our daily rant about “stupid society” and later on I would be annoyed that the kitchen was dirty and that my spoon disappeared. I would be annoyed at the uncomfortable chair in my room and the old mattress. The fan of the bathroom next door would drive me mad at 1 am. The list goes on. My day was basically filled with episodes of anger and discomfort and I didn’t enjoy my time that much.

In the month when I was not supposed to complain I found that  I felt completely different about the same living situation. While I was basically still complaining in the sense that I stated the obvious “I’m tired, because the cleaner slammed the door at 7 in the morning” I tried to not feel anything about it. It was a fact like “The sky is blue” or “It is 2pm”: Nothing to be upset about. Instead of being annoyed that someone woke me up and to complain about something that already happened and that I now cannot change anymore I treated it as something that you cannot really be upset about. Kind of like gravity.

Nobody is angry about the laws of physics even though gravity might have annoying consequences sometimes! The state pensions might not be safe, but that’s why I have a private pension fund (which gives me a false sense of safety my brother would say). The kitchen might be dirty, but I will only stay here for another week. I turned the fan in the bathroom off and told people I would be really upset with them if they turned it on at night time. If there’s gravity, well, we deal with it: We try to not jump off buildings (usually) and try to not drop technology! If we do then we accept that it’s our own mistake: We do not blame gravity!

In the month where I was not supposed to complain I felt a lot better. I didn’t always succeed in not complaining. It’s a tough job if you complained all your life. Usually I managed though! It made me feel a lot more calm and content. Of course I wasn’t happy about the dirty kitchen or the loud cleaners, but I didn’t dwell on these mere facts that I couldn’t change. I didn’t let these things ruin a potential for being in a good mood.

Try it: Stop complaining about gravity!

What are the things you usually complain about? Have you found a healthy positive way of complaining? Let me know in through your comments!

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