I think it is absolutely amazing that people from every walk of life, every economic status, age, culture, trade and caste, find something to complain about in reference to their occupation on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter what people do, they will complain. From our most coveted and necessary professions to our least important and lease desirable, there is always something to complain about, and it is awesome. Why is it awesome? Because it shows us that no matter how smart or wise we are, how rich or poor we are, how old or young, or what we do, it is in all of us to point out flaws that we feel hinder personal or group progression relative to our life and our occupation or current life status. What does this mean? It means that all of us take enough pride in what we do to complain about it. If we didn’t complain, we wouldn’t care. When we exist without complaining, we cease to better ourselves and/or the people around us.
The problem of complaining lies within lack of action. Complaining turns from identifying flaws of our surroundings (in hopes to fix those flaws) to consuming us day in and day out with the same complaints without assertive action to fix said flaws. This is when complaining starts having a negative effect on us. A sense of hopelessness falls upon us when what we complain about isn’t fixed or is out of our power to be fixed. This sense of hopelessness has a direct effect on the job we do or the situation we are in. We start to believe the complaints outweigh the job or task at hand. We start to believe what we do isn’t worth doing simply because the burdens of the constant complaints surpass the things we enjoy about our job or life situation. So with every good intention we have bringing up solutions to fix inefficiencies and problems in our lives and the lives of the people around us, we also become further away from those solutions and begin to accept the situation we are in, with all the complaints that go with the situation, thus it becomes unfixable.
Nothing in unfixable. You have two options to get out of the hopelessness you find by constant complaining. The first is that you can fix what you are complaining about, no matter the repercussions. You solved the problem over and over in your head, tenfold so why don’t you put those solutions on paper or into action to make your environment better? At the very least you can say you tried to make it better, so there will be no sense in complaining about something that has already been attempted to be fixed. The second option is complain about something else. Complain about something you can control, something that has less risk as the other stuff you complain about. This puts the control back into your hands and allows you to feel like you are progressing in a positive way from the complaints that you generate.
Complaints become a running checklist. Instead of adding more complaints and becoming overwhelmed with complaints, we should start offering solutions for complaints we already have. We all know how to solve the issues at hand, we just need to find the courage and assertiveness to go through with the fix. If something is worth complaining about, it is worth fixing especially if others around you have the same complaints and share the same solutions. So complain, complain, complain all you want, but you also have to fix, fix, fix what you complain about.