Nothing can be quite as irritating as someone who complains. And yes, I realize that by stating that fact, I am in essence doing the very thing that I am railing against… Irony… it’s a bitch.
Growing up, unless I lost an appendage, any complaints were met with very little attention. The more you complained in my house, the less likely you would get any kind of assistance or attention. More often than not, we got the whole, “I’ll give you something to complain about!” only unlike lots of parents who “threaten” physical violence, my mother had very few qualms about bashing our heads in with the nearest heavy object.
Because of my upbringing, I don’t complain aloud about much. I broke at least two ribs one New Year’s Eve hours before I had scheduled a dinner party for friends and carried through with it and no one but my gf knew about it. This isn’t some great ability to dampen pain, but a well understood principle that EVERYONE has problems and mine are no worse than anyone else’s.
I hear people complaining about such incredibly trivial things all the time. I try my best to understand that not everyone has a strong will or an ability to shrug off the small stuff… I get that, I really do… but I am often turned off by weakness. It kills me a little inside to have to deal with people who complain a great deal, but it is much worse when someone complains about something that can be easily remedied.
I had a conversation with a buddy a year or so ago about survival. The conversation touched upon the idea that strong people suffer tragedy as often as weak people, the only difference is how the two types of people view the situation. A strong person views tragedy with a will to succeed despite the tragedy, while a weak one starts building their case for failure by pointing to the tragedy. This led to a conversation about people who suffer a major calamity such as being shipwrecked or surviving a plane crash on a frozen mountain top. The survivors will be peppered with both kinds of people, strong and weak. My buddy asked me what I would do in a situation in which I survived… how would I deal with the weak ones… the ones who couldn’t contribute to the survival of the group. I didn’t hesitate, “I would suffocate them in their sleep the first chance I got.” My friend laughed because he knew that would be my answer.
He went on to tell me that if/when the chips were down, he would rather be with me than with someone who was both strong, but compassionate. To his thinking, being strong and compassionate was a recipe for disaster. Such a person functions trying to balance rational thought with emotional understanding. As such, when tough decisions needed to be made, chances were better than good that the person would most likely make an error in judgment.
I believe in the survival of the fittest to a certain extent. I believe anyone who can contribute to the well-being of the group is valuable, and those who don’t contribute and can only survive because of the compassion of the group are not valuable.
Complainers are rarely ever self sufficient in my experience. They are people who begin laying their groundwork for plausible deniability early and often to ensure that if something goes wrong, they can’t be blamed. Those are the first people I would get rid of I think… they not only cause dissent in the ranks, but they also tend to over analyze plans to the point that nothing ever gets done.
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Rocking and Writing with: Party Ben – Tender Umbrella
via FoxyTunes