A Society of Complainers?

     We have become a society of complainers. It is almost considered a hobby now to stick our noses where they don’t belong, point the finger elsewhere and ridicule someone else for something meaningless. I suppose it is all too easy to do nowadays. All one has to do is sit on a couch, get on social media, and move an index finger to scroll through life. Then, we get to judge everything that everybody does, leave comments, get into arguments over the dumbest things with people you don’t even know (and that might actually not be real people), and all of a sudden, our lives are consumed by looking at other lives. Yet, we all believe that we have the answers and that our opinions are worth more than others.

     This societal shift has weakened us mentally, increased obesity levels astronomically, wasted a gigantic amount of our time and energy, and has consumed our thoughts with inconsequential ideas, instead of important ones. Not only is it a massive drain on our lifestyles, but the kids’ activity levels and problem solving skills suffer, and they grow up with this idea that we should be judgmental about everything, and that we should complain about everything as well. The easier things are, the easier it is to get upset. If you’re used to eating steak every night and then come home to a Spam dinner, I bet you’ll complain a bit. And in today’s world, if you complain, you’re sure to get an apology because your life suffered this tiny moment of discomfort. How do we expect kids to grow when they are handed everything they want, spend a large amount of time streaming videos or playing video games, and then are apologized to in the rare occurrence that they don’t get what they desire? What are we doing?

     Terry Brands, Assistant wrestling coach at the University of Iowa, is a two-time national champion, and a two-time world champion. This is a guy who worked extremely hard, accomplished amazing things, and instills his lessons learned into student-athletes today. In 1996, his twin brother, Tom Brands, won an Olympic title. That year, after previously winning two world titles, Terry didn’t even make the Olympic team. He was crushed and could not deal with it as he lost in the finals of the Olympic trials. When he saw his father later after losing in the trials, his father said, “You get what you earn.” Even in a time of emotional pain, the harsh reality was dealt to him by someone who loved him dearly. Isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Isn’t this how we teach lessons of overcoming adversity, of getting better, not quitting, and of realizing that you have to earn what you want? Or is better to complain and just wait until people come to your beck and call?

     Maybe this is why we don’t accomplish as much as we should today. We attempt to be all things to all people, and apologize when someone gets offended or doesn’t get what they want. This is Iowa. This is traditionally an atmosphere of hard-working, church-going, and genuinely nice people. We should be the last part of the U.S. that conforms to this new line of thinking. When people complain, I think of laziness, and I think of excuses. There’s another word that people confuse with having an excuse, and that is having an explanation. An explanation is when you’ve tried to accomplish something without regard to whatever is happening around you. You did what you could with what you have. And whatever the outcome is, there is an explanation along with it. It explains why something happened the way it happened. An excuse is something that is usually built-in before one has even tried to accomplish something. “Well if I don’t get this done, it’s because of this.” The more we do this, the easier it becomes to think of excuses. Before you know it, we have an excuse ready for almost everything we do. This way, if we don’t accomplish our goals, we always have something else to blame, besides ourselves. That’s right, remove ownership because there’s no way we could be the main issue! Not a winning mentality here, folks.

     Having the built-in excuse is similar to “pointing the finger,” as we do on social media all the time. The idea is to put the attention elsewhere and away from us. Society now deflects the focus onto everybody else instead of themselves. We like to hold everybody else accountable for their actions, while at the same time we dismiss accountability from ourselves. Proverbs 27:23 says, “Know well the condition of your flocks, and pay attention to your herds.” Interesting enough, the Bible doesn’t say to know the condition of your Facebook friend’s flock, nor does is say to pay attention to their herd. However, Matthew 7:3 does pose this to us, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

     One thing I’ve noticed is that, apparently, everybody is supposed to be perfect. Unless of course you aren’t, then at least you have that built-in excuse ready to wash away any wrong-doing on your part. And, miraculously, we are somehow all experts at everybody else’s jobs now. Isn’t that amazing? It may be a field in which we may never have worked in before, but yet, we sure know a better way in which they can do their job. And we make sure to tell the world this so that they look stupid and we look smart (I hope you are picking up on my sarcastic points). But, if they are doing their job wrong, rest assured they probably have a good excuse for that (now that’s ironic and sarcastic). Speaking of irony, the people that complain the most are more often than not the same people that utilize that built-in excuse on a daily basis. It’s just so much easier to look at everybody else’s flaws other than our own. We need to get better. We need to get tougher. Sometimes there are pot-holes in the road. We can either complain about them, or we can drive around them and come up with a solution to fix them. If this involves alerting a person about the pot-hole, please do not do it with an attitude. Here’s a look into the mind of somebody who has to hear this attitude, “Well I was actually planning on fixing that pot-hole tomorrow. But now that you complained with such attitude, I don’t think I’ll get to it until next week.” Here’s a case where this kind of attitude actually impedes on progress. All we hear today is the abundance of problems, but we should hear solutions. If you’re going to present a problem, present a solution with it as well.

     I’d like to challenge people to stop worrying about others. Maybe we should worry about ourselves. Once we’re individually in a good place, then we can worry about our family. Once our family is in a good place, then we can worry about our community. If we all did this correctly, then by God, the community would be prosperous and happy.