“True happiness comes not when we get rid of all of our problems, but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential source of awakening, opportunities to practice patience, and to learn.”
—Richard Carlson
I have four brothers. No sisters, only brothers.
Every year without fail, when I go east to Cape Cod where we grew up, I spend time with all of them at once. When large families like ours get together, I find they often tell crazy stories that are funny to some members and not so funny to others. They rib one another, laugh at one another, stuff comes up, and yes, stuff comes out.
Lots of stuff.
On a recent trip, one of my brothers casually remarked, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that we sit around and complain about how our parents didn’t do this and didn’t do that, yet here we all are—all five of us together, talking and laughing with one another, working stuff out and through?”
Bingo! Whatever faults our parents had—and Lord knows everyone thinks their parents have faults (my kids included)—somehow ours did something really right. They encouraged us to stay together and stick together, and here we are.
On that trip, the same brother asked us if we thought “kids just always like to complain about their parents instead of trying to focus on what they did right?”
I thought about it, and it resonated as true to me. We all complain. A lot. It seems so much easier to complain.
I complain about such stupid stuff. My kids do, too. I’ve been thinking about how really unattractive it is—at least to me—how utterly negative it is, and how I can choose to change it.
Like right now.
I decided I want to see if it makes me feel different to stop complaining. I’m going to tell my kids that I’m instituting a “complaint-free zone” in the house. In my office, too. In fact I’m going to try it for a year. (When I told that to a friend, she said, “Oh, Maria, get real! A year? How about one day at a time?”)
Okay. Maybe that’s more doable. One day at a time: No complaints about anything today. Not about friends or jobs, or what we’re eating or not eating for dinner, or traffic, or what a sibling did or didn’t do. Not even about politics. Remember: if you don’t like your elected officials, you can always get into the arena yourself.
One day at a time, out with the complaints both large and small, because those complaints affect my space, my day, my relationship with others, and my life. No more complaints about my age, my body, my work, my friends, and none about how I grew up or about what my parents didn’t do right. It’s so boring. After all, my kids are healthy, and so am I. I’m so very blessed, and I want to stay in that place of being grateful for my blessings. That feels so much better than whining.
Getting rid of the complaining allows me to move forward with gratitude. Especially to my parents for the greatest gift they gave me: the gift of friendship with my siblings.
I can only hope that way off in the distant future, when I’m long gone, that my own four kids are sitting together around a table sharing their lives and sharing stories about their childhood. I know that what I did wrong will come up, and I can hear that already. But I hope they’ll also pause and realize, “Wow, look at us here—all together these many years later, sitting together, spending time together, laughing together. Our parents must have done something right!”
Dear God, please help me to stop complaining, to stop focusing on what’s wrong, to stop zeroing in on what I regard as people’s faults. Help me to focus instead on what’s beautiful in my life and the gifts that have been given to me. Give me the grace to forgive others quickly and completely and to move forward in my life. Amen.