ANY COMPLAINTS?
Here's something everyone is dying to hear about: how you
really feel.
NOT.
When does empathy turn to sympathy turn to apathy turn to
enmity? I can get from there to there in about 5 seconds. I
am just not interested in how crappy you feel. I feel that
if you're able to complain about how crappy you feel, you
don't feel all that crappy. Certainly not as crappy as you
COULD feel. You come to me (well... don't, actually) with
double pneumonia, laryngitis, the sweats, several orifices
that didn't come with the original package, and a phonebook
opened to the names of local priests... ok. I am sorry for
you. But don't you make me sorry for me: don't you sniffle
at me. Don't koff in my direction. Don't blow your nose. If
you have to blow your nose, leave the room, unless it's my
house. Then leave the house.
Everybody, everytime, everywhere, has something "not right"
with them, be it illness, financial problems, boy/girl
difficulties, teacher hassles, boss hassles,
who's-in-control- of-the-remote hassles. Some people think
it's a hassle when the squirrels eat all the bird seed. Some
people have a problem with throwing rocks at birdseed-eating
squirrels. Very often these are the same people. People do
two things, and only two things every day. First... they
bullshit. Second, they complain. Think of the last day you
got through without hearing a complaint. Nothing is ever
exactly "right." Everything could be "better." Everyone from
Amy Vanderbilt to Ms. Manners to my last boss has pointed
out that the appropriate way to respond to "Hi, how are
you?" is to say "Fine, thank you." Not, "Terrible. Glad you
asked. Hope you've got nothing planned for the next several
days while I tell you my pathetic life story... Let me tell
you how it all began..."
An awful lot of time is wasted on people complaining about
things the person listening has already complained about, on
his or her own. The complaints are the same, only sometimes
you're sending, sometimes receiving. All this time could be
better wasted at something else. Virtually ANYTHING else.
Staring blankly at an ESPN special on the impact of
Canadians on the world of soccer. Reading Reader's Digest.
Finally emptying out your luggage from that vacation three
weeks ago. Feeding the cat. Again. Remembering to feed the
fish. Finally. Feeding the fish TO the cat, which at least
demonstrates some efficiency, and creates more time to
waste.
Since people have different tolerance levels for what ails
them, it gets tricky trying to decide where to deposit your
genuine sympathy. After all, you only have so much to give.
I originally thought that people could wear a number, 1 to
10, giving everyone around them an overall assessment of how
they were doing. It is important, after all, to know whether
John or Mary is the better candidate for having their toilet
saran-wrapped that day. The problem with this system is
twofold: first, as has been pointed out by at least one
incredibly astute observer of the human condition, everyone
bullshits. Therefore, somebody who's feeling pretty damn
good is likely to give themselves a lower number just to try
to gain additional sympathy for which they have no real use.
Or, somebody feeling real bad is likely to lie about feeling
real bad, because after all nobody really wants to know if
you're feeling really bad.
The second reason is that almost everybody feels about the
same, almost all of the time. Bill Gates complains as much,
each day, as does some homeless guy on 126th street. Maybe
more. I call this the Misery Index. Everybody is pretty much
at 5. You reach 10 (a GOOD thing) only in moments of drunken
stupor, or orgasm, and believe me, the consequences are that
in either event you'll have a 0 real soon, to even you out.
So maybe the real point of complaining is to create action
that results in people not complaining less, but about
pettier things. We want the bemoans of a broken nail to
become the standard, warranting a 5 overall-life
assessement, with "chipped" right above (6) and "both of
them!" right below (4). This, I believe, is the entire
reason to have government: to inexorably pass laws that
create conditions above and below which we define
unacceptability. We started the human race off with extreme
positions, like these:
KILL EVERYONE
KILL NO ONE
Believe it or not, those simple expressions of principle
result in Paragraph 413.b(a)(1)(A) of Section 26.345(c?. or
d?) of HB 7861, wherein debate rages whether investment
return on tax-deferred IRAs NOT rolled over by parents whose
children QUIT college but make a lot of money ANYWAY should
be taxed at the rate they would have been if the kids HAD
graduated college and worked at McDonald's for approximately
2 years, or at the new, ungraduated rate applied henceforth
under the prior Section, except where made inapplicable by
Sections that follow. Follow?
Unfortunately, in attempting to narrow the scope of genuine
complaining, we simply create more opportunity TO complain.
Real tragedy may be prohibited by legislation. But you
didn't even know you COULD complain about whether the tax
should/should not be whatever it is/was until they decided
it would/wouldn't be. So that screws up THAT day. Almost
makes you want to KILL someone. And you're not even sure
why.
That's two solutions proposed, and disposed of. There is a
third. The only way to truly lessen the amount of
complaining in the world, to make it better, bring joy into
it, is this:
smile
and shut up.
(c)2002 RWPladek
http://mydeas.commailto:
outbroker@...bio: Bob Pladek has worked big, small and intermediate
businesses alike. A lawyer NOT up on disciplinary
charges, he is a published humorist, editorial
cartoonist, and musician. He has a forgiving wife, two
smart daughters, and entirely too many animals for his
liking.
