Complaints

A friend of mine was saying to me during morning coffee: "I complain, don't know to whom nor about whom, but I complain. To the defenders of intelligent designs of the universe, I want to tell them that I don't understand why they give people so many hopes, desires, and promises that can not be completed or fulfilled. And I complain about the insatiableness that we carry inside of us."

It was really too early in the morning for me to digest such deep philosophy and, as a rule, I don't much like complainers and complaints. More than anything else it takes too much energy which could have been used more positively in viable things in life, But, as he is a good friend and I respect him for his usual honesty and reasonableness generally, I listened to his lament attentively. Then, I suddenly remembered something significant.

In an old film I once saw but the name of which I can't recall, (might be 'The Misfits'?) with Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe, there was one scene in which Marilyn listened in a deserted mountain cabin to a man who said his wife never complained about anything. She died of a haemorrhage. He couldn't have taken her to the hospital in town because the car wouldn't work, it required a spare tire which he didn't have. Marilyn said: "Sometimes complaining helps."

In this case, it's evident that it did help to ease the pain or guilt of the husband, that the car couldn't function at that moment was just an unfortunate coincidence.

There are complaints and complaints. One is of injustice and another is of permanent dissatisfaction. The former has to do with reclaiming one's right, and the latter seems more like a lament about life itself, as a renunciation of the privilege of living. Neither helps much to change the evolution or the lack of it the cause of the complaint.

Tag:Complaints

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