Complaining about what irritates us in life is reminiscent of the constant quarrels of spouses whose relationship has long gone wrong: quarrels for the sake of quarrels. Has anyone ever felt better about it? British writer Oliver Burkeman is sure not.
In the US state of Colorado, there lives a man who, to put it mildly, is annoyed by the noise of planes taking off and landing at the Denver airport, about 50 kilometers from his home. How much does it annoy him? In 2015, the airport received a total of 4870 different complaints, of which 3555 were filed by this man. And he is not alone.
Only 5 people write 61% of complaints received at Portland Airport, and in the US capital Washington, “two people living together” complained about Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport 6852 times in a year.
I myself am a big fan of filing formal complaints and I confess that I admire such complainers to some extent. Yes, I know that one of the definitions of insanity is the constant repetition of the same action in the hope of getting a different result. But I respect them precisely for this epic inflexibility. Yes, our world may be absurd and constantly pissed us off, but at least someone has enough self-respect to not come to terms and continue to protest against this fact.
Irritation and complaints feed themselves
But it won’t bring them happiness. These stories show that irritation and complaining feed on themselves: complaining about something that is out of our control, we get relief for a while, but in general we only make it worse: paying more and more attention to the problem, we suffer more and more from it.
We begin to listen intently, expecting new noise, and even more annoyed when we finally hear it. We are stressed even when there is no noise, constantly in tension, waiting for the silence to be broken. No wonder one complaint turns into hundreds—complaints fuel the problem.
This is easier to see in the relationship between us and our environment. Complaining about others is like having a fight with your partner and continuing to fight and fight over and over again just for the sake of fighting. Has this ever helped anyone?
As is often the case, Buddhists knew this long before most of us. The “First Noble Truth” of Buddhism is often translated as “Life is suffering”, but this is too dramatic: one might think that we are talking about constant torment. Fortunately, most of us do not often experience real unbearable torment. This word, dukkha, is actually closer to dissatisfaction.
Our dissatisfaction is generated not by the circumstances of our life, but by the way in which we try to achieve happiness.
Life can be wonderful, terrible, or somewhere in between, but there is always something a little off: either what is happening to us is unpleasant, or it is pleasant, but we know that it will soon end. The one who complains about the noise of the planes is deeply mired in “dukkha”: he is unhappy when the plane flies over him, and he is unhappy when the plane does not pass – because he knows that the silence will soon end.
Ancient Buddhist wisdom is that our dissatisfaction is generated not by the circumstances of our lives, but by the way in which we try to achieve happiness – to make these circumstances become ideal and remain so forever. This venture is doomed to failure, because nothing lasts forever. Planes come and go, and we will only be happy to the extent that we learn not to worry about it.
About the Developer
Oliver Burkeman – British publicist, author of the book Antidote. An antidote for an unhappy life” (Eksmo, 2014).