Let’s Learn How to Eliminate Our Complaints

We human beings complain about many things, people and situations. But what are complaints really all about?

Let’s just think about it. We were going to go swimming but it suddenly becomes overcast, windy and is threatening to rain. So we complain that we can’t go swimming. In other words, we can’t do what we wanted to do.

Someone was supposed to be coming today to fix our stove, but they couldn’t make it and won’t be coming until tomorrow. It’s another reason for us to complain because our expectations were not met. Then we complain because our children didn’t clean up their mess when playing in the house. We may also complain because our boss does not appreciate what we do, even though we are doing our best effort.

Basically, the majority of our complaints are because our expectations of others, things or situations have not been met or did not turn out the way we wanted them to. It means that we become irritated enough to complain when what we wanted — our expectations — can’t be fulfilled. In other words, our view of how things should happen in the world did not go according to our plans or expectations and our complaints show our negative reaction to this situation.

This form of complaining is usually just a mild irritation. But with some people, such as in cases of “road rage” and especially with an abusing spouse, their precise expectations of what they think others should do can seldom be met at the unreasonable level that they want, which causes them to become extremely angry and violent.

But why do we have these expectations in the first place?

I would say that it’s mainly because we are not flexible enough in our thinking to allow for something other than what we expect. It would seem then, that if we are not flexible, we are being somewhat stubborn in our expectations. This would be mild stubbornness in the case of minor complaints to downright rigid stubbornness in the case of road rage or an abusing spouse.

Then how is stubbornness formed?

I think it starts from the “views of the world” we hold that we developed while we were growing up, from our parents, our personal experiences (mainly in the family environment) and through our schooling years. These views seem to give us some form of stability in our lives by helping us to make sense of the world through what we can expect to happen. Therefore, we believe that when we do certain things, we should have certain expected results each time.

For instance, when we were planning to go swimming and heard the weather forecast the day before, then we expected to go swimming. When we called the man to fix the stove and he said he was coming on a certain day, we expected that, because we were taught that people should do what they say they are going to do. We expected our children to clean up their mess when playing in the house because that’s what we taught them to do. Also, we expected our boss to appreciate the good work we were doing because we almost always received compliments for a job well done while we were growing up.

But it’s really the degree of how we react to our expectations not being met, from mild complaints through to outright anger that is usually reflected in the examples that were set for us, mainly by our parents, as we were growing up. Thus, we develop our own opinions about things from these early experiences, thinking this is really how things are or should be in the world. Thus, when our expectations are not met, we normally react as a reflection of how we were raised.

If for example, we were raised in a family environment where either one or both parents were quite stubborn resulting in a lot of anger, then this is likely how we would react to our expectations not having been met.  If on the other hand our parents were calm easy-going people then we would likely react with only mild complaints.

Nevertheless, when we think about it, wanting things to go our way is really a form of being self-centred or conceited. But the degree of conceit really has a lot to do with our self-conceptions — our view of ourselves while we are living and interacting with people and things.

However, once we know that everything changes and nothing stays the same within God’s realm, we really should learn to accept things just as they happen and not complain. We can think, “Okay this is God’s act and I can’t change it, so I will just calmly accept it.” Complaining never improves the situation anyway, so we just have to learn accept it and see what we can learn through the experience.

However, if we are able change the subject of our complaints to improve the situation, then we should do so, but if it’s really out of our hands, then we should accept it and move on.

We should do as we are taught through Precept 6, ‘Efface Your Self-Conceptions’. If we are able to eliminate the conceptions we have of ourselves, then we can accept everything calmly without complaints. We can have our expectations, but if they are not met, then we won’t react to them. God’s act is constantly changing and nothing stays the same anyway, therefore we just have to learn to bend with the situations we are given in life.