I did a crazy thing this summer. While I was at the laundromat due to dryer malfunction I ripped an article out of an Oprah magazine. I really did. I looked around to see that none of the other people in the laundromat were looking and then I ripped the whole article (several pages) from the magazine and tucked it into the basket with my clean (ish) laundry. It was an article by Martha Beck who is a well known author of such books as Find Your Own North Star (which is standing in my kitchen bookcase half read and covered in dust) and lots of other feel goody, get your shit together kind of books. I don't normally read that sort of thing and probably ought to but I bought that one several years ago on a sale rack at a low moment when I thought I could read my way out of the dumps and find a path out of laundry and diapers and snotty noses. Little did I know that time would fix two out of four of those problems.
Martha Beck is a well respected people person and she's got a nice style - it's friendly and familiar and at times it's funny too. There's a lot to like about her and her work it's just that the whole "self help" thing just ain't my bag. I'm a wallower. I'm a wallowing wallower.
So it surprised me that I actually tore the article out of the magazine at the laundromat. It was about how complaining and "venting" really doesn't seem to help. That exploding over stuff or holding stuff in to explode over it is not generally helpful. That little things irritating the snot out of you to the point that you have to "vent" only results in more negative feelings and doesn't really get it out. Several years ago when we lived in Texas we had a neighbour who had a son around my children's age. This neighbour didn't drive which meant that she couldn't get anywhere in the neighbourhood where we lived because there was no public transit and so sitting at my kitchen table and complaining was one of the only things she could do. I was really down at the time. I was an unhappy stay at home mom who never intended to be a stay at home mom. I was in Texas which was so far out of my comfort zone both in terms of temperature and distance from family and I felt like a fish out of water most of the time. So sitting with this neighbour and bitching and complaining all the long afternoons seemed like a good way to pass the time. It wasn't. It started to occur to me that I felt much, much worse after spending an afternoon with this woman than I did before. That the constant squawking and bitching and complaining about the heat and about the differences between where we'd grown up and where we were living wasn't helpful at all. It's terrible to admit but moving to New York and getting away from that neighbour and the incessant complaining was very, very good for me.
Now, you're probably saying...but loca, you complain a lot even in your present situation. Seriously, who do you think you're fooling. I won't say that you're wrong. I do complain a lot. I do use this forum to complain a lot. It's not really fair to say that I've changed and that I'm all over the complaining and squawking and bitching because I'm not. I've been going around and around with my career choice and my fight with NYS to have my Ontario certification recognized and it's been a hassle. The Martha Beck article was useful to me for about 10 minutes this summer in helping me to see that the bitching doesn't lead anywhere. And that while I recognize other people's venting (like the neighbour) as being tiresome and irritating - I mean, who wants to listen to someone who only has negative things to say all the time or who's always on the point of exploding when some small thing comes up...it's exhausting to be part of that...uh..where was I? Oh yeah. I need to focus on what I can do to improve things.
There was a poem that I memorized in high school that summed it all up but I guess I didn't really take the lessons of the poem to heart. (I'll try to write it here but I may be missing pieces of it and I don't know who to credit with writing it)
There once was an oyster whose story I'll tell
who found that some sand had got under his shell
just one little grain, but it gave him such pain
Now did he berate the workings of fate that had lead him to such a deplorable state?
Did he curse the government? Call on the sea to give him protection?
No. He said to himself as he sat on the shelf
"Since I cannot remove it, I'll try to improve it"
As the years rolled on by, as the years often do
He came to his ultimate destiny...stew
And that one grain of sand that had bothered him so
Was a beautiful pearl all richly aglow
Now this tale has a moral for isn't it grand what an oyster can do with a morsel of sand?
What couldn't we do if we'd only begin improving the things that get under our skin?
Cheesy, eh? But worthwhile and that's what the Martha Beck article was saying. Channel the venting, channel the angy (not Carl Paladino style though...) and fix the source of the problem or if you can't fix the source of the problem then use the angry to get something else positive done.
Here's the article that I stole Martha Beck's Anti-Complain Campaign and I plan to read it again when things start to irritate me to the point of needing a vent.
Don't worry that I'll go Mary Sunshine on you...that won't happen.
