Constant Complaining Quotes

The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the good fight.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business, if there was any competition.

Do not constantly spend your time complaining about a problem you may be having or may be up against, focus your time toward correcting the problem. Always remember, Time is value!

You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition.

Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stalin was in heaven, I would note the irony, but I couldn't complain. I don't make the fucking rules.

..luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and great hotels are full of fatheads who, when they express an opinion, seem as though they are from another planet. It was also my experience that one of the worst aspects of travelling with wealthy people, apart from the fact that the rich never listen, is that they constantly groused about the high cost of living – indeed, the rich usually complained of being poor.

In a culture that prizes the can-do, self-starter attitude, to be a pessimist is simply to be a complainer – if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. To live in such a culture is to constantly live in the shadow of an obligatory optimism, a novel type of coercion that is pathologized early on in child education in the assessment: “Does not like to play with others.

The most successful relationships are ones with a really low negativity threshold. In those relationships, couples allow each other to complain, and work together to constantly repair the tiny issues between them. In such cases, couples don't bottle up their feelings, and little things don't end up being blown completely out of proportion.

don't feel sorry for me. I am a competent, satisfied human being. be sorry for the others who fidget complain who constantly rearrange their lives like furniture. juggling mates and attitudes their confusion is constant and it will touch whoever they deal with. beware of them: one of their key words is "love." and beware those who only take instructions from their God for they have failed completely to live their own lives. don't feel sorry for me because I am alone for even at the most terrible moments humor is my companion. I am a dog walking backwards I am a broken banjo I am a telephone wire strung up in Toledo, Ohio I am a man eating a meal this night in the month of September. put your sympathy aside. they say water held up Christ: to come through you better be nearly as lucky.

When you gossip about another person, listeners unconsciously associate you with the characteristics you are describing, ultimately leading to those characteristics’ being “transferred” to you. So, say positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues, and you are seen as a nice person. In contrast, constantly complain about their failings, and people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.

In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life. Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good. Then we deplore the fact that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experience that God has given to others, and we consider this lament to be pious. We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

When we surround ourselves with people who are committed to understanding and loving, we’re nourished by their presence and our own seeds of understanding and love are watered. When we surround ourselves with people who gossip, complain, and are constantly critical, we absorb these toxins.

I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work.

But I must object to your dooming Colonel Brandon and his wife to the constant confinement of a sick chamber, merely because he chanced to complain yesterday (a very cold damp day) of a slight rheumatic feel in one of his shoulders." "But he talked of flannel waistcoats," said Marianne; "and with me a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with the aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble.

She constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die.

I know it's common for old people to complain about the modern moment, and lament the passing of a golden age when children were polite and you could buy a kilo of meat for pennies, but in our case, my boy, I think I am not mistaken when I say that something fundamental has changed about the world in which we live. We have reached a state of constant reinvention. Revolutions have moved off the battlefield and on to home computers.

Look for reasons to say 'yes' instead of 'no,' he reminded me. Screen in rather than constantly screening out. Always ask yourself this: If an interesting guy were right in front of you, would you honestly turn that person away because of a few pounds or inches, or a sentence in a profile that you don't like? If so, that's fine. Just don't complain when you can't find anybody suitable because you've eliminated every potential guy on a technicality. Because if these guys eliminated people on technicalities, they probably wouldn't date you, either.

This suggests that our boding mechanisms depend on our own perception of the other and that therefore our ability to bond with them depends much more on emotional settings than on abstract "humanlike" qualities. For the same reason, it is the very emotionality Commmander Data from Star Trek displays every time it complains about having no emotions that endears it; an emotionless machine would not constantly raise the issues of its own worth, value, and personhood.

Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don't want to go.

I want to live today in anticipation of what you will do next instead of constantly complaining about what isn't pristine in my life.

But as the sun rose I crested the mountain of my self-pity and remembered I was always going to die at the end of this life anyway. What did it really matter if I spent it like this—caring for this boy—as opposed to some other way? I would always be earthbound; he hadn’t robbed me of my ability to fly or to live forever. I appreciated nuns now, not the conscripted kind, but modern women who chose it. If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have? These exotic revelations bubbled up involuntarily and I began to understand that the sleeplessness and vigilance and constant feedings were a form of brainwashing, a process by which my old self was being molded, slowly but with a steady force, into a new shape: a mother. It hurt. I tried to be conscious while it happened, like watching my own surgery. I hoped to retain a tiny corner of the old me, just enough to warn other women with. But I knew this was unlikely; when the process was complete I wouldn’t have anything left to complain with, it wouldn’t hurt anymore, I wouldn’t remember.

This bad habit of fault-finding, criticizing and complaining is a tool that grows keener by constant use, and there is grave danger that he who at first is only a moderate kicker may develop into a chronic knocker, and the knife he has sharpened will sever his head. Hooker

So it is with sorrow, each thinks his own present grief the most severe. For of this he judges by his own experience. He that is childless considers nothing so sad as to be without children; he that is poor, and has many children, complains of the extreme evils of a large family. He who has but one, looks upon this as the greatest misery, because that one, being set too much store by, and never corrected, becomes willful, and brings grief upon his father. He who has a beautiful wife, thinks nothing so bad as having a beautiful wife, because it is the occasion of jealousy and intrigue. He who has an ugly one, thinks nothing worse than having a plain wife, because it is constantly disagreeable. The private man thinks nothing more mean, more useless, than his mode of life. The soldier declares that nothing is more toilsome, more perilous, than warfare; that it would he better to live on bread and water than endure such hardships. He that is in power thinks there can be no greater burden than to attend to the necessities of others. He that is subject to that power, thinks nothing more servile than living at the beck of others. The married man considers nothing worse than a wife, and the cares of marriage. The unmarried declares there is nothing so wretched as being unmarried, and wanting the repose of a home. The merchant thinks the husbandman happy in his security. The husbandman thinks the merchant so in his wealth. In short, all mankind are somehow hard to please, and discontented and impatient.

Right now, you know, everyone one is going to be there for you." I explained. "Everyone will surround you with love and you'll be busy and have things to keep your mind off the worst. And then in six weeks, or may be twelve weeks, everybody else's life is going to start to get back to normal. But your life isn't going to be normal again. As a matter of fact, as you probably understand already, it's going to get harder for you. And after a while you're going to start feeling guilty because you're going to be going to the same people constantly for help, or just to talk. And as their lives get back to normal, you going to start to worry about leaning on them too much. There might come a time when you think, I'm asking too much. I've got to stop complaining. So when you're down and you feel guilty for burdening your family and friends," I said, "pick up the phone and call me.

The letters of Karl Marx make frequent reference to the violent quarrels between himself and his parents; the letters from Karl’s parents complain of his egoism, his lack of consideration for the family, his constant demands for money and his discourtesy in failing to answer most of their letters. MARX

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter 'Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?' in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton 'rapid response' team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's 'issues.

Another explanation for the failure of logic and observation alone to advance medicine is that unlike, say, physics, which uses a form of logic - mathematics - as its natural language, biology does not lend itself to logic. Leo Szilard, a prominent physicist, made this point when he complained that after switching from physics to biology he never had a peaceful bath again. As a physicist he would soak in the warmth of a bathtub and contemplate a problem, turn it in his mind, reason his way through it. But once he became a biologist, he constantly had to climb out of the bathtub to look up a fact.

Real-World Example = Don’t constantly complain about the work conditions. (It’s too bright, it’s too dark, it’s too cold, I wish it smelled more like cinnamon.) A simple rule of thumb to remember is, “Unless there’s a live cobra in the office, I’ll be all right.

Humans are often this way. They go about their lives, constantly working, complaining of boredom one minute and overwork the next. They pause only to observe the niceties of society, greeting each other with 'Good morning' while their minds are somewhere else completely.

I think it is cruel to expect the constant presence of any one family member (to tend to the ill). Just as we have to breathe in and breathe out, people have to "recharge their batteries" outside the sickroom at times, live a normal life from time to time; we cannot function efficiently in the constant awareness of illness. I have heard many relatives complain that members of the family went on pleasure trips over weekends or continued to go to the theater or movie. They blamed them for enjoying things while someone at home was terminally ill. I think it is more meaningful for the patient and his family to see that the illness does not totally disrupt a household or completely deprive all members of any pleasurable activities; rather, the illness may allow for a gradual adjustment and change toward the kind of home it is going to be when the patient is no longer around...The family too has a need to deny or avoid the sad realities at times in order to face them better when their presence is really needed.

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author of 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, says, ‘When you gossip about another person, listeners unconsciously associate you with the characteristics you are describing, ultimately leading to those characteristics being transferred: to you. So, say positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues, and you are seen as a nice person. In contrast, constantly complain about their failings, and people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.

Nothing was more nauseating than people who constantly complained about their life, but did nothing about it.

Henri Nouwen described it this way: “My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered my interruptions were my work.”2

I made constant deals with myself, as though these deals would culminate in some life-changing event: If there are five babies on the plane, it won’t crash. If I just say yes to this client, I’ll get into Forbes. If the light turns green when I count to three, I won’t complain for the rest of the day. If I don’t eat dessert today, I can have Mexican tomorrow.

These students of mine, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exile in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the wind they had never felt on their skin. This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.

538 If you are always morose, pessimistic, and complaining, people will begin to doubt the eloquent advice you constantly offer. Seeing your example, would they be able to put their faith in the God you witness to?

Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don’t want to go. The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa’s table: “What has become of the dreams of our youth?” they ask, with a smug, disillusioned air. “Those years are long gone, and life’s a bitch.” I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears.

The best platoons and task units embraced those lessons with Extreme Ownership, acknowledged the problems, and figured out ways to solve them. They constantly improved. The worst units rejected the criticism and complained about how training was too hard.

All the wealth and ingenuity of epigram and illustration does not prevent us from feeling that the sentences often simply ‘repeat the same thought, clothed in constantly different guises, over and over again’, as Fronto complained in the century following.

It is interesting to note that the people who had a good relationship with the person who died often heal their grief much more easily than those whose relationship with the deceased was filled with turmoil, bitterness, or disappointment. The reason is that a positive relationship is associated with good memories, and remembering and reprocessing these memories helps in the healing process. When people who had a bad relationship think back on it, they have to relive the pain. In their mind, they are still trying to fix what was wrong, to heal the wound, but they can’t. In addition, the guilt they carry with them impairs the healing process. Donna is a case in point. Donna and her mother had had a stormy relationship, fighting constantly over things that seemed insignificant in and of themselves. Yet in spite of their problems, the year after her mother’s death was the hardest of Donna’s life. Her husband could not understand the force of her grief; all he had ever heard her do was complain that her mother was selfish and uninterested in her. What he failed to understand was that Donna had to grieve not only over her mother’s death, but also over the fact that now she would never have the mother-daughter bond she had always wanted. Death had ended all her hopes.

Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: "The part of life we really live is small."5 For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and no rest from their lusts abides. Think you that I am speaking of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings. To how many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers draw forth blood! How many are pale from constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of clients that crowd about them leave no freedom! In short, run through the list of all these men from the lowest to the highest—this man desires an advocate,6 this one answers the call, that one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence; no one asserts his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake of another. Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A cultivates B and B cultivates C; no one is his own master. And then certain men show the most senseless indignation—they complain of the insolence of their superiors, because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience! But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of the pride of another when he himself has no time to attend to himself? After all, no matter who you are, the great man does sometimes look toward you even if his face is insolent, he does sometimes condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to appear at his side; but you never deign to look upon yourself, to give ear to yourself. There is no reason, therefore, to count anyone in debt for such services, seeing that, when you performed them, you had no wish for another's company, but could not endure your own.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why’s he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer.

My streets, my cistern. My old house. Its beams, floorboards and staircase creaked slightly, almost imperceptibly, with a dry, uniform, almost constant cracking sound. What’s wrong? Where does it hurt? It seemed to be complaining of aches in its bones, in its centuries-old joints.

She had arthritis, which meant that sometimes she experienced the agony of her diamond rings not fitting. She complained to the doctor about it constantly; she’d paid good money for those rings and somehow felt that the NHS simply didn’t want her wearing them – socialist cartel that it was.

Parents and teachers complain that today’s children, plugged into computers, tablets, consoles, and other devices, constantly zap from one activity to the next and have lost the capacity to concentrate—but this is untrue. Far from reducing our ability to concentrate, video games can actually increase it.

Usually scripts are beneficial, or at least harmless. The constant daily drone of small talk, the ritual greetings, even venting anger or complaining about politics or foreign affairs that we have no direct knowledge of, are all comforting. It’s the soothing background noise of a group without a pending crisis.

Healing, discussing, processing our problems is so vital, but the distinction between the constant obsessing, complaining and focusing on the negative, it becomes almost like an addiction. Learning to reset and redirect is imperative, so we can focus more on gratitude, positivity, and all of the good in our lives.

Excessive application during four days of the week is frequently the real cause of the idleness of the other three, so much and so loudly complained of. Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together, is in most men naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes, too, of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous, and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, brings on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work.

So you should be grateful about most everything, because, being an American, you live a very privileged life. There’s just a tiny amount of room for complaining, because there are a few legitimate things worth complaining about. Like, let’s say you watched a show about people who crashed on an island, and it was full of interesting mysteries, and you kept watching for six seasons, hoping to find answers to all the mysteries—but then in the finale they totally didn’t answer anything and acted like it was the characters and their resolutions I was supposed to care about—like Jack’s constant whining should have been my focus rather than the smoke monster or the mysterious hatch. That’s awful. That’s worth complaining about . . . even years later.

I'm a good person. I eat pretty well. I work out. I go to bookstores. I save people. For a living. I have better things to do than get hauled in for a medical checkup every week. Have I complained the last few months? Constantly. Was I a good patient? No. What can I say? When your primary care provider is a shadowy government agency, you have to be your own medical advocate.

mine—not many people were. I knew who she was; I’d seen her around. She was one of the Green clique, an annoying group of tree-huggers who constantly complained about how the school, and the school district, could be more environmentally friendly. But I had as much in common with them as I had with any of the other cliques at school. Tree-huggers, jocks, nerds, artsy-fartsy types—

People have been carping in this way for many centuries. Socrates feared that the act of writing would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls.” The sixteenth-century scientist Conrad Gessner worried that the printing press would facilitate an “always on” environment. In the eighteenth century, men complained that newspapers would be intellectually and morally isolating, and that the rise of the novel would make it difficult for people—specifically women—to differentiate between fiction and fact. We worried that radio would drive children to distraction, and later that TV would erode the careful attention required by radio. In 1985, Neil Postman observed that the American desire for constant entertainment had become toxic, that television had ushered in a “vast descent into triviality.

We should associate only with positive, focused people who we can learn from and who will not drain our valuable energy with complaining and uninspiring attitudes. When we develop and maintain relationships with those who are committed to constant improvement and the pursuit of the best that life has to offer, we will have plenty of company on our path to the top of whatever mountain we seek to climb.

Life may have been hard, but we were happy. Yes, boys died and food was difficult to come by, but at least no one was shooting at us. We only ate one meal a day, but for me, coming into the camp at the age of six, I accepted this as normal. I never thought that life was unfair because I had to eat garbage. Instead, I looked at the scraps of food from the dump as a blessing. Not all the boys in the camp could do this. I knew some who chose to feel sorry for themselves, who complained constantly about their lot in life. What is the point of such complaining? After all the whining and complaining is over, you still live in a refugee camp. All the complaining in the world will not make your life any better. Instead, you must choose to make the best of whatever the situation in which you find yourself, even in a place like Kakuma.

That’s just the way life is. It can be exquisite, cruel, frequently wacky, but above all utterly, utterly random. Those twin imposters in the bell-fringed jester hats, Justice and Fairness—they aren’t constants of the natural order like entropy or the periodic table. They’re completely alien notions to the way things happen out there in the human rain forest. Justice and Fairness are the things we’re supposed to contribute back to the world for giving us the gift of life—not birthrights we should expect and demand every second of the day. What do you say we drop the intellectual cowardice? There is no fate, and there is no safety net. I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not a micromanager, so stop asking Him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet. Life is a long, lonely journey down a day-in-day-out lard-trail of dropped tacos. Mop it up, not for yourself, but for the guy behind you who’s too busy trying not to drop his own tacos to make sure he doesn’t slip and fall on your mistakes. So don’t speed and weave in traffic; other people have babies in their cars. Don’t litter. Don’t begrudge the poor because they have a fucking food stamp. Don’t be rude to overwhelmed minimum-wage sales clerks, especially teenagers—they have that job because they don’t have a clue. You didn’t either at that age. Be understanding with them. Share your clues. Remember that your sense of humor is inversely proportional to your intolerance. Stop and think on Veterans Day. And don’t forget to vote. That is, unless you send money to TV preachers, have more than a passing interest in alien abduction or recentlypurchased a fish on a wall plaque that sings ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ In that case, the polls are a scary place! Under every ballot box is a trapdoor chute to an extraterrestrial escape pod filled with dental tools and squeaking, masturbating little green men from the Devil Star. In conclusion, Class of Ninety-seven, keep your chins up, grab your mops and get in the game. You don’t have to make a pile of money or change society. Just clean up after yourselves without complaining. And, above all, please stop and appreciate the days when the tacos don’t fall, and give heartfelt thanks to whomever you pray to….

If you think about it all the successful people you know have 5 things in common: 1) They are focused 2) They are relentless 3) They are resourceful 4) They are flexible  5) They are constantly reinventing themselves - evolving, learning and growing If you think about it all of the unsuccessful people you know have 5 things in common: 1) They are lazy 2) They complain, A LOT 3) They tend to blame everyone else for their situation 4) They are set in their ways 5) They know it all

Washington’s style of interracial engagement has been all but forgotten, and when remembered, usually disparaged: he put a premium on finding consensus and empathizing with other groups, and by his example encouraged dominant groups to do the same,” wrote Norrell. “He cautioned that when people protest constantly about their mistreatment, they soon get a reputation as complainers, and others stop listening to their grievances. Blacks needed a reputation for being hard-working, intelligent, and patriotic, Washington taught, and not for being aggrieved.”19

Karen had noticed over the years that whether someone else felt interrupted was an entirely subjective phenomenon. Pauses in conversation were often ambiguous. Karen had noted that laidback people rarely seemed to complain of being interrupted, even when they clearly were. And control freaks constantly claimed they were being interrupted, even after quite luxurious pauses. The whole interruption issue seemed less based on clear-cut behavioral cues and more based on the subjective belief of a given speaker that they should still be in control of the discussion.

The nature of the present economic crisis illustrates very clearly the need for departures from unmitigated and unrestrained self-seeking in order to have a decent society. Even John McCain, the 2008 U.S. Republican presidential candidate, complained constantly in his campaign speeches of “the greed of Wall Street.” Smith had a diagnosis for this: he called promoters of excessive risk in search of profits “prodigals and projectors”—which, by the way, is quite a good description of many of the entrepreneurs of credit swaps insurances and subprime mortgages over the recent past.

All of this is rattling around inside my head as my taxi pulls up to my friend Susan’s apartment in Geneva. Susan is a writer from New York. She is a woman who speaks her mind, in English and French. Her candor is constantly bumping up against the Swiss reserve. Susan complains that the Swiss are “culturally constipated” and “stingy with information.” Even if that information is vital, such as “your train is leaving now” or “your clothing is on fire,” the Swiss will say nothing. To speak out would be considered insulting, since it assumes ignorance on the part of the other person.

It was in the Cornish summer of his twelfth year that Peter began to notice just how different the worlds of children and grown-ups were. You could not exactly say that the parents never had fun. They went for swims - but never for longer than twenty minutes. They liked a game of volleyball, but only for half an hour or so. Occasionally they could be talked into hide-and-seek or lurky turkey or building a giant sand-castle, but those were special occasions. The fact was that all grown-ups, given half the chance, chose to sink into one of three activities on the beach: sitting around talking, reading newspapers and books, or snoozing. Their only exercise (if you could call it that) was long boring walks, and these were nothing more than excuses for more talking. On the beach, they often glanced at their watches and, long before anyone was hungry, began telling each other it was time to start thinking about lunch or supper. They invented errands for themselves - to the odd-job man who lived half a mile away, or to the garage in the village, or to the nearby town on shopping expeditions. They came back complaining about the holiday traffic, but of course they were the holiday traffic. These restless grown-ups made constant visits to the telephone box at the end of the lane to call their relatives, or their work, or their grown-up children. Peter noticed that most grown-ups could not begin their day happily until they had driven off to find a newspaper, the right newspaper. Others could not get through the day without cigarettes. Others had to have beer. Others could not get by without coffee. Some could not read a newspaper without smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. Adults were always snapping their fingers and groaning because someone had returned from town and forgotten something; there was always one more thing needed, and promises were made to get it tomorrow - another folding chair, shampoo, garlic, sun-glasses, clothes pegs - as if the holiday could not be enjoyed, could not even begin, until all these useless items had been gathered up.

Tocqueville charged that Americans lived under the constant threat of a tyranny of the majority - an alternative despotism - that muzzled dissent and killed freedom of opinion in America. He claimed, 'I know of no country where there is in general less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion that in America.' What Tocqueville feared most from equality was a deadening uniformity of thought, which he believed he detected in America. he depicted Americans as victims of a crippling conformity of opinion, justified only in part by the great instability of conditions inherent in a new country, yet aggravated by an extreme case of national pride that made self-criticism unlikely. He complained that one could not even criticize the weather in America.

If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have? These exotic revelation bubbled up involuntarily and I began to understand that the sleeplessness and vigilance and constant feedings were a form of brainwashing, a process by which my old self was being molded, slowly but with a steady force, into a new shape: a mother. It hurt. I tried to be conscious while it happened, like watching my own surgery. I hope to retain a tiny corner of the old me, just enough to warn other women with. But I knew this was unlikely; when the process was complete I wouldn't have anything left to complain with, it wouldn't hurt anymore, I wouldn't remember.

Willow gazed up at him, her silly grin still in place. "You know wha'? You're kinda cute when you crook your eyebrows down like tha'." Rider muttered a curse, lifted her off the floor, and tossed her over his shoulder. "Juan, you and Hicks help Mrs. Brigham to her room. I'll take care of this little hellion." Willow lifted her head from where she dangled over Rider's shoulder. "See yuh later, Mrs. B." Miriam smiled and waved. "i think Mrs. B is pickled," Rider's passenger said in a loud whisper as he hauled her out the door. "No thanks to you,hellion," he growled, and smacked her bottom. "Ow!" As he carried Willow into the house, Rider was hard pressed to quell a sudden urge to laugh. In her bedroom, he unceremoniously dumped her on her bed, but when he turned to leave, her pitiful sounding voice halted his exit. "Rider,come here a min-it." "Oh,hell, I suppose you're going to be sick." Grabbing a basin off her dresser, he shoved it under her chin. "It serves you right, you know." He watched nervously as she knocked the bowl aside. "Dun...don't be mad." She held her arms out to him. "Come closer. Gimme a kiss and we'll make up. I like your kisses so-o-o-o much." This time Rider couldn't stall his grin and inadvertently leaned closer. She was on him like a duck on a June bug. With two hearty handfuls of his shirt, she yanked him down on top of her and plastered her mouth against his. Talking against his lips, the tipsy girl had the audacity to complain, "Not like this. Do it like before. You know, with your tongue." Rider squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. This isn't fair, he bemoaned silently. He tried to rise but Willow held tight, squirming her voluptuous little body against his. Sweat broke out on his forehead. If he didn't put a stop to this soon...He lifted his mouth from hers. "If I promise to kiss you with my tongue, will you let go of me and go to sleep?" "Uh-huh." Willow's eyes drooped, but the affect appeared more seductive than drunken. Lifting her shoulders slightly off the bed, he wound his arms around her and covered her mouth with his. His tongue explored hers in a long, liquid kiss, tasting of wine and desire. Rider savored its promise, wishing just this once, he could be less a gentleman. Willow wrapped one of her legs over his and shifted her hips, innocently aligning his swelling heat with hers. He started and bolted off the bed. "Holy hell! You did it again!" "What?" Her voice was sluggish and sleepy now. Disgusted with himself, Rider stomped to the door. "Sleep it off, Freckles." Outside Willow's door, Rider slumped against the wall and shook his head. Willow Vaughn was a constant surprise, and he loved the girl so bad it hurt.

Shaya crossed one leg over the other. “How do you feel about Derren?” “Look, I’m a very self-aware person. I know I have plenty of flaws. I know I’m not very forthcoming when it comes to feelings or my past. I have constant nightmares and prefer sleeping outside in my hammock. I cook when I’m stressed—even if I’m not hungry or it’s three o’clock in the morning. Being a Seer, feeling people’s emotions all the time, means I sometimes get struck by a sensory overload, and so I’ll have my days when I need space, time, and privacy. “Derren is a very dominant, forceful, intrusive male who thinks my business is his and who is determined to have his own way all the time. But even though he pushes me to tell him things, he never pushes too hard—he shares with me so that I’ll share with him. Even though he doesn’t like any distance between us, he lets me have my space and privacy when I need it. And even though he very rarely gets a peaceful night’s sleep because of me, he never complains or sleeps anywhere but beside me. How can I not care about the fucker?

Two mathematicians were having dinner. One was complaining: ‘The average person is a mathematical idiot. People cannot do arithmetic correctly, cannot balance a checkbook, cannot calculate a tip, cannot do percents, …’ The other mathematician disagreed: ‘You’re exaggerating. People know all the math they need to know.’ Later in the dinner the complainer went to the men’s room. The other mathematician beckoned the waitress to his table and said, ‘The next time you come past our table, I am going to stop you and ask you a question. No matter what I say, I want you to answer by saying “x squared.”‘ She agreed. When the other mathematician returned, his companion said, ‘I’m tired of your complaining. I’m going to stop the next person who passes our table and ask him or her an elementary calculus question, and I bet the person can solve it.’ Soon the waitress came by and he asked: ‘Excuse me, Miss, but can you tell me what the integral of 2x with respect to x is?’ The waitress replied: ‘x squared.’ The mathematician said, ‘See!’ His friend said, ‘Oh … I guess you were right.’ And the waitress said, ‘Plus a constant.

Why complain? Does it solve your problems? No. In fact, it attracts problems; compounds them. Complaining attitude carries an unconscious negative charge attached to it. A constantly whining person invariably gets drowned in an ocean of negativity. Complaining can not work as a strategy as we all have finite time and energy and when we complain we lose our valuable time and also our mental peace and happiness. Your attitude defines you; if you are a complainer then you are problem-oriented; you would attract problems, and if you focus on grappling with the problems instead of passive complaining then you are solution-oriented, you would find answers to your problems. Complaints are akin to the dark clouds that shroud the beaming sun in your life, and the worst part is that these clouds are not capable of even producing a drizzle to wash away your agonies. If you feel like complaining about anything, from your present life situation to any affliction bothering you and making you unhappy, think of your many blessings and rejoice on them. There are countless millions in this world who would sacrifice anything to be in your shoes.

Keep a gratitude journal. The mind tends to focus on problems to be solved rather than on what is working. Change this up by starting a gratitude journal. At least once a week write in your journal about the things for which you are grateful. Leave complaining out of this journal! This practice increases the likelihood that you will notice positives in your life, a skill that will reduce your vulnerability to emotion mind. Track your worries (Behar et al. 2009). Each week write down the top three worries in your mind and rate them as to how likely they are to happen. Once a month review your list and see how many of the things you worried about did or did not become problems. Chances are you will find a higher percentage of your worries never manifested. Reflect on the usefulness of constant worrying. Look for ways to make lemonade (Linehan 1993a). As the saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Reflect on things in your life that have seemed like lemons at the time (such as a divorce) that ended up being lemonade (allowing you to find a happier relationship). Try to find opportunities in your daily life to make lemonade out of disappointments or reversals.

After a series of promotions—store manager at twenty-two, regional manager at twenty-four, director at twenty-seven—I was a fast-track career man, a personage of sorts. If I worked really hard, and if everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, then I could be a vice president by thirty-two, a senior vice president by thirty-five or forty, and a C-level executive—CFO, COO, CEO—by forty-five or fifty, followed of course by the golden parachute. I’d have it made then! I’d just have to be miserable for a few more years, to drudge through the corporate politics and bureaucracy I knew so well. Just keep climbing and don't look down. Misery, of course, encourages others to pull up a chair and stay a while. And so, five years ago, I convinced my best friend Ryan to join me on the ladder, even showed him the first rung. The ascent is exhilarating to rookies. They see limitless potential and endless possibilities, allured by the promise of bigger paychecks and sophisticated titles. What’s not to like? He too climbed the ladder, maneuvering each step with lapidary precision, becoming one of the top salespeople—and later, top sales managers—in the entire company.10 And now here we are, submerged in fluorescent light, young and ostensibly successful. A few years ago, a mentor of mine, a successful businessman named Karl, said to me, “You shouldn’t ask a man who earns twenty thousand dollars a year how to make a hundred thousand.” Perhaps this apothegm holds true for discontented men and happiness, as well. All these guys I emulate—the men I most want to be like, the VPs and executives—aren’t happy. In fact, they’re miserable.  Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people, but their careers have changed them, altered them physically and emotionally: they explode with anger over insignificant inconveniences; they are overweight and out of shape; they scowl with furrowed brows and complain constantly as if the world is conspiring against them, or they feign sham optimism which fools no one; they are on their second or third or fourth(!) marriages; and they almost all seem lonely. Utterly alone in a sea of yes-men and women. Don’t even get me started on their health issues.  I’m talking serious health issues: obesity, gout, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, you name it. These guys are plagued with every ailment associated with stress and anxiety. Some even wear it as a morbid badge of honor, as if it’s noble or courageous or something. A coworker, a good friend of mine on a similar trajectory, recently had his first heart attack—at age thirty.  But I’m the exception, right?

had made acquaintance with convicts in Tobolsk; at Omsk I settled myself down to live four years in common with them. They are rough, angry, embittered men. Their hatred for the nobility is boundless; they regard all of us who belong to it with hostility and enmity. They would have devoured us if they only could. Judge then for yourself in '-hat danger we stood, having to cohabit with these people for some years, eat with them, sleep by them, and with no possibility of complaining of the affronts which were constantly put upon us. " You nobles have iron beaks, you have torn us to pieces. When you were masters, you injured the people, and now, when it's evil days with you, you want to be our brothers." This theme was developed during four years. A hundred and fifty foes never wearied of persecuting us—it was their joy, their diversion, their pastime; our sole shield was our indifference and our moral superiority, which they were forced to recognize and respect; they were also impressed by our never yielding to their will. They were for ever conscious that we stood above them. They had not the least idea of what our offence had been. We kept our own counsel about that, and so we could never come to understand one another; we had to let the whole of the vindictiveness, the whole of the hatred, that they cherish against the nobility, flow over us.

The prominent British statesman and scholar Edmund Burke (1729–1797) emphasized another fundamental characteristic of the civil society—valuing human experience, tradition, and custom. Burke was outspoken in his sympathy for the American colonists and condemned the oppressions of the British monarchy that led to the American Revolution. However, he was also repulsed by the French Revolution. Burke saw the latter as a revolt led by elites and anarchists who had as their purpose not only redress against French rule but the utter destruction of French society, traditions, and customs. Burke explained: “There is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding,—that is, a marked distinction between change and reformation. The former alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their essential good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot be known beforehand. Reform is not change in substance or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was.

Delay. Here is an excellent strategy for being chronically miserable and maddening to others: Be chronically dissatisfied with everything in your life, complain constantly, but do nothing effective to change your situation. If you are in a particularly bad marriage or work situation, be sure to stay there, in that it provides a never-ending supply of material to complain about and to justify why you feel so badly. If someone suggests an alternative, reject it as something that wouldn't work or that you've already tried. Or, try it out, but make sure it doesn't work. If anyone ever criticizes you for any of this, either agree profusely with their criticism and extend it even further, or, if you feel you have enough credits to do so, finally let out your frustration and spite on them for their insensitivity, ineptitude in trying to assist you, or their stupidity in not seeing the hopelessness of your situation. Whether you continue with your habitual passive-aggressive behavior or show a rare indulgence of aggression, remember to always hold to the morally superior position. By adopting this strategy, you will remain defeated but you won't be alone. By dragging the other down with you, you can further justify your position and enjoy a certain amount of triumph. After all, you are used to this and have never expected anything different. This will be a particularly effective strategy with your children who will find it more than usually difficult to reject you. With any luck at all, they will never give up on you, and you can sustain this solution to life's problems for a life time.

She knew what she had to do.” “Did she? How odd for a pampered lady. Though I’m sure she complained constantly about the lack of heat and food and furnishings.” Hell and blazes, he could see where this was going. “She did not. But it was only one night, and we were hiding from killers.” “Trust me, Jackson, killers or no, if you’d hauled me about the woods and put me through such deprivation, I would have been complaining. Loudly. Repeatedly. “ He pushed back from the table to eye her with abject skepticism. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d make the best of things.” “And she didn’t?” With a hard glare, he crossed his arms over his chest. “One night in a cottage is hardly a good test of how well she’d endure a lifetime in Cheapside?” “So last night was a test, was it? And even so, she passed it. In response, you talked about duty and honor and such. Made her feel as if marrying her would be your concession to propriety. Have I judged the situation aright?” It was getting harder to pretend that he’d behaved like anything but an arse this morning. “She has a bloody duke chomping at the bit to marry her, and you think she could be happy with me? Here?” Aunt Ada planted her hands on her hips. “You know, I’m beginning to be insulted. I thought I’d made this quite a comfortable home, and now I find that you think it comparable to some hovel in the woods.” “That’s not what I-“ “If you showed the same lack of feeling with her as you are with me right now, it’s a wonder she didn’t slap the tar out of you.” She shook her head. “You decided her future without even considering her feelings. Don’t you find that presumptuous?

Once upon a time, there were four girls, who had enough to eat and drink and wear, a good many comforts and pleasures, kind friends and parents who loved them dearly, and yet they were not contented." (Here the listeners stole sly looks at one another, and began to sew diligently.) "These girls were anxious to be good and made many excellent resolutions, but they did not keep them very well, and were constantly saying, 'If only we had this,' or 'If we could only do that,' quite forgetting how much they already had, and how many things they actually could do. So they asked an old woman what spell they could use to make them happy, and she said, 'When you feel discontented, think over your blessings, and be grateful.'" (Here Jo looked up quickly, as if about to speak, but changed her mind, seeing that the story was not done yet.) "Being sensible girls, they decided to try her advice, and soon were surprised to see how well off they were. One discovered that money couldn't keep shame and sorrow out of rich people's houses, another that, though she was poor, she was a great deal happier, with her youth, health, and good spirits, than a certain fretful, feeble old lady who couldn't enjoy her comforts, a third that, disagreeable as it was to help get dinner, it was harder still to go begging for it and the fourth, that even carnelian rings were not so valuable as good behavior. So they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings already possessed, and try to deserve them, lest they should be taken away entirely, instead of increased, and I believe they were never disappointed or sorry that they took the old woman's advice.

It was because I always did everything that was asked of me without a word of complaint. It was because I was so convenient in that sense that he didn’t bother to do anything about someone else pushing their work onto me. (...) After that incident, I started to realize there were two kinds of people: those who knew how the world worked and pushed everything they didn’t want to do on others and those who happily accepted being on the receiving end of the former’s actions. When I entered 6th grade—no, when I grew old enough to understand my surroundings, I started to realize that I was one of the latter. As I did, all my memories started to flood back, one-by-one. That time, that time, and that time too… so that’s what was happening. (...) It was because I never talked back. That in itself was fine, really. None of the things I did were unmanageable. It wasn’t like I considered me doing those kinds of stuff some sort of loss, and I didn’t hate them for constantly taking it easy. It’s just that imagining myself being used as a convenient tool made me sad. I thought back. At that time, my discovery made me so sad, and it was getting too painful to keep silent about it, so I told my older sister. Even if you think that fellow human beings should help each other, others won’t necessarily think of you as being worth it. It’s not like I wanted anyone to appreciate me. I just never imagined that people thought of me as such an idiot. I won’t stay after school anymore. As long as I’m around others, they’ll ask me to do something. They probably think I’m an idiot because I always did what they asked without resisting. I don’t care about what they think. I just hate being used. Of course, if I have to do it I will. I won’t complain at all. But, if it’s not necessary… If it turns out it’s someone else’s responsibility… If I don’t have to do it, I won’t. I absolutely won’t.

Thorn in My Side     “Cast your cares on the LORD and He will sustain you” (Psalm 55:22).     I have a certain person in my life who causes me grief on a regular basis. It seems in order for his day to be complete he must have conflict. If there’s not conflict, then he creates it. And I seem to be his favourite target.   I refer to this person as the “thorn in my side”.  He is a constant reminder to me that fear and anxiety are real feelings. Some days, I think that my life would be absolutely stress free without him and the problems he creates. However, through studying God’s Word, I have been able to see him in a different light. Although I don’t enjoy the trials he puts me through, I’ve realized that because of these things I have come to rely more on God.   I find myself leaning on God’s wisdom and knowledge to help me reply to this man. I find myself praying for the Holy Spirit to fill me with peace when I must confront him. I find myself praying to God for forgiveness – the need to be forgiven for what I think and do, and the need to forgive this man. And recently, I find myself praying for this man. Jesus commanded that we pray for our enemies:   “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).   I am truly learning what this means in my life. Although this man causes me great sorrow and pain, it is through these actions that I have come closer to God. It is through his acts that I have developed a deeper relationship with my Lord. And although I don’t know that I can ever thank him for the anxiety and hurt, I am thankful that through this I have come to know Jesus closer.       Paradoxically, prayer is the activity done in total solitude that reminds me that I am never alone. It is the counter to my illusion of self-sufficiency, a plea for help after much bravado and floundering. Prayer is my signed Declaration of Dependence. ~ Dr. Ramon Presson         Complaining    

On quitting Bretton, which I did a few weeks after Paulina’s departure—little thinking then I was never again to visit it; never more to tread its calm old streets—I betook myself home, having been absent six months. It will be conjectured that I was of course glad to return to the bosom of my kindred. Well! the amiable conjecture does no harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontradicted. Far from saying nay, indeed, I will permit the reader to picture me, for the next eight years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a harbour still as glass—the steersman stretched on the little deck, his face up to heaven, his eyes closed: buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that fashion; why not I with the rest? Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. However, it cannot be concealed that, in that case, I must somehow have fallen overboard, or that there must have been wreck at last. I too well remember a time—a long time—of cold, of danger, of contention. To this hour, when I have the nightmare, it repeats the rush and saltness of briny waves in my throat, and their icy pressure on my lungs. I even know there was a storm, and that not of one hour nor one day. For many days and nights neither sun nor stars appeared; we cast with our own hands the tackling out of the ship; a heavy tempest lay on us; all hope that we should be saved was taken away. In fine, the ship was lost, the crew perished. As far as I recollect, I complained to no one about these troubles. Indeed, to whom could I complain? Of Mrs. Bretton I had long lost sight. Impediments, raised by others, had, years ago, come in the way of our intercourse, and cut it off. Besides, time had brought changes for her, too: the handsome property of which she was left guardian for her son, and which had been chiefly invested in some joint-stock undertaking, had melted, it was said, to a fraction of its original amount. Graham, I learned from incidental rumours, had adopted a profession; both he and his mother were gone from Bretton, and were understood to be now in London. Thus, there remained no possibility of dependence on others; to myself alone could I look. I know not that I was of a self-reliant or active nature; but self-reliance and exertion were forced upon me by circumstances, as they are upon thousands besides; and when Miss Marchmont, a maiden lady of our neighbourhood, sent for me, I obeyed her behest, in the hope that she might assign me some task I could undertake.

The morning was already setting up to be hectic, and Jon thanked his lucky stars that Jessie was so good at his job and a constant spark-plug of activity. Oh god, you did not just think Jessie was a spark-plug? You really are getting old. Next thing you know you’ll being saying whipper-snappers and break a hip getting out of bed. He shook his head. I guess I had a good run. Jessie quickly re-entered the office. “Alright. Elisabeth has her caffeine fix and said she’ll be down to say goodbye in a few. So let’s get this bad boy going for the week. Travel plans are done for next month and meetings for the week are in you planner so I’m assuming they’ll be no more complaining about flying coach class this time?” Jessie gave a sly wink and kept organizing his desk. “Yes. And for that I thank you for that my color-coding, hyper computer organized planner. We have to make sure the next presentation for Chicago is ready in three weeks; the storyboards for the new campaign ideas have to be finished by Tuesday the 16th so we can get them shipped before I head out there.” “And let’s not forget our important morning ritual.” Jon looked at Jessie with a question about to form before the realization hit him. His expression changed from confused to stern. “No cat videos Jessie. I swear. Enough of the cat videos.” “C’mon. You know you love them and they brighten your dour moods. Look at this one.” Jessie turned his screen and Jon begrudgingly looked at the cute little puppy and kitten with captions over them. “How can you not love this?” Jessie smiled. “The cute little kitty tells the playful puppy not to do it and yet the puppy bonks the little kitty on the head with his little puppy paw. “Boop Boop.” And then the cat swipes at the puppy and it falls off the bed. You know this is internet gold.” Jon smiled. “Can we get back to work?” Jessie nodded and then walked up to Jon - without hesitating, he bonked him lightly on the head. “Boop.” He paused and added, “I think this puppy is onto something.” Jessie grinned ear to ear still. “I pledge, from now on if something makes me as happy as this bonking picture I’m just going to say Boop boop.” Jon stood stone-faced but a second later, could not stop his smile. “I am not amused.” Jon shook the smile away. “Now, if you’re done boop booping me, there is something else I want to talk with you about.” Jessie looked at Jon with a quizzical smile. “Not to blow my own horn but I have a new and brilliant thought my young apprentice.” Jessie opened his mouth to comment on the blowing horn, but Jon held up his hand and cut him off. “Stop it.” Jessie closed his mouth and swallowed the sexual innuendo-laced comment he had forming on the tip of his tongue.

For God’s sake, Anders, your pacing is driving me wild,” Leigh said with exasperation. “Sit down.” Anders paused with surprise and turned to peer at the brunette curled up in the corner of the couch with a book in her hands. “I’m not pacing, I’m . . .” She arched her eyebrows, waiting, and he sighed. “Pacing,” he acknowledged and sank onto the nearest chair. He rested his elbows on his spread knees, allowing his hands to dangle between them, and stared out the window. After several minutes, he dropped back in the chair with a heavy sigh, then straightened and asked impatiently, “What the devil is she doing up there?” “She’s checking with her academic advisor to ensure that missing the first two weeks of classes won’t bugger her up for the term,” Leigh reminded him patiently. “Yeah, but that should have been a five-minute conversation. She’s been up there over an hour,” he complained. Valerie had helped clean up the kitchen after breakfast, then had taken Roxy with her and escaped upstairs on the pretext of calling the veterinary college to be sure she was still welcome after missing the first two weeks of the semester. “Yes, well, perhaps whoever she needs to speak to wasn’t available and she’s waiting for a call back,” Leigh suggested. “Or maybe they had work for her to do to keep from falling behind and she’s up their reading her textbooks and studying.” “Or maybe she’s hiding,” Anders said unhappily. Leigh tsked with irritation. “Why would she be hiding?” Anders didn’t respond, but in his mind he was remembering their kiss that morning . . . well, kisses. Or maybe one kiss. He wasn’t sure how to classify it. Did you have to come up for air to classify it as more than one kiss? Or was it counted in minutes or seconds? Because it had been a constant devouring of each other’s mouths for several minutes. “Oh my, yes. I see,” Leigh murmured. Anders glanced up at her murmur and noted her narrowed concentration on him. She’d read his damn mind. “Yes, that might have made her want to hide out,” she said sympathetically. “It wasn’t that long ago when I had my first encounter with life mate passion. It was pretty terrifying. And she didn’t have any idea what was happening. I mean, as an immortal you had heard about it, had some idea of what to expect, and yet you were still overwhelmed by it. Imagine how she must feel. She got hit by a nuclear explosion of passion out of nowhere.” Anders sighed and ran one hand wearily over his closely cropped hair. Leigh wasn’t saying a damned thing he hadn’t already thought of. Which was why he suspected Valerie was hiding out. The question was, how long would she hide? And how was he supposed to get her to know and trust him if she wouldn’t come out of her room?

Everyone knew there had never been a cowardly Confederate soldier and they found this statement peculiarly irritating. He always referred to the soldiers as “our brave boys” or “our heroes in gray” and did it in such a way as to convey the utmost in insult. When daring young ladies, hoping for a flirtation, thanked him for being one of the heroes who fought for them, he bowed and declared that such was not the case, for he would do the same thing for Yankee women if the same amount of money were involved. Since Scarlett’s first meeting with him in Atlanta on the night of the bazaar, he had talked with her in this manner, but now there was a thinly veiled note of mockery in his conversations with everyone. When praised for his services to the Confederacy, he unfailingly replied that blockading was a business with him. If he could make as much money out of government contracts, he would say, picking out with his eyes those who had government contracts, then he would certainly abandon the hazards of blockading and take to selling shoddy cloth, sanded sugar, spoiled flour and rotten leather to the Confederacy. Most of his remarks were unanswerable, which made them all the worse. There had already been minor scandals about those holding government contracts. Letters from men at the front complained constantly of shoes that wore out in a week, gunpowder that would not ignite, harness that snapped at any strain, meat that was rotten and flour that was full of weevils. Atlanta people tried to think that the men who sold such stuff to the government must be contract holders from Alabama or Virginia or Tennessee, and not Georgians. For did not the Georgia contract holders include men from the very best families? Were they not the first to contribute to hospital funds and to the aid of soldiers’ orphans? Were they not the first to cheer at “Dixie” and the most rampant seekers, in oratory at least, for Yankee blood? The full tide of fury against those profiteering on government contracts had not yet risen, and Rhett’s words were taken merely as evidence of his own bad breeding. He not only affronted the town with insinuations of venality on the part of men in high places and slurs on the courage of the men in the field, but he took pleasure in tricking the dignified citizenry into embarrassing situations. He could no more resist pricking the conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist putting a pin into a balloon. He neatly deflated the pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted, and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they never were quite certain what had happened until they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly ridiculous.

1) We need to take our minds off what we don’t want and onto what we do want, so that the way to manifest your desires is to think about them as often as possible. Thoughts become things; we create our world with our thoughts, and so on. 2) We are told again and again that if we expect things to turn out badly, they will. I have lost count of how many times I have been told not to talk of worst-case scenarios because in doing so I will ‘make them happen’ and so court disaster. ‘Speak of the Devil and he will appear’, so the saying goes. 3) Want is another word for lack. Thoughts of wanting only attracts more wanting and more lack. By continually thinking about your goal, you are continually wanting, continually asking. This will act to ‘freeze’ things, keeping you in a state of constant state of waiting, wanting, anticipation and lack. Wanting = Asking = Lack. 4) Complaining and focusing on the negative at the expense of the positive is prevalent in every society. There is a very clear correlation between those who are very happy and an almost non-existent level of complaining. Those who complain a lot, generally have lives that are poorer in all ways than those who do not complain. Those who do not complain, generally have fuller, richer and happier lives. It is complaining that keeps you in a state of wanting. Complaining just invites more into your life to complain about because complaining means wanting things to be different. 5) What isn’t allowed is complaining for the sake of complaining – talking in a negative way about something for fun, to gossip about someone in a derogatory way, to pass the time of day, or worse, to make you feel better, more important or as a way of connecting with another negative person. 6) The point is not to get the words right, the point is to change your focus to all the good that is in your life. Your energy will rise automatically and naturally just by this one move. 7) A person who notices a lot of good in their life, has a lot of good in their life. A person who is grateful a lot, has a lot to be grateful for. It works that way around. Look at the world and smile, and it will smile back at you. 8) BELIEFS BECOME THINGS Rather than mere thoughts, it is your deeply held beliefs which have the greatest effect on your life. 9) You need to believe in your own power, really believe it; not just wishfully think it. Not just say ‘I believe in myself’ in some sort of self-help sound bite-type way, while inside part of you is disagreeing. 10) This is yet another reason for not working on goals too quickly. Any failure in achieving a particular goal will only dent your belief; we cannot risk that. But, every success, no matter how small, will grow your belief in your own ability. Little tiny successes all build into a wonderful strong belief. 11) Having worked hard for a few days (preferably weeks) to eradicate the bulk of your negativity, you start noticing the effect of doing this. Notice, accept and believe that small changes in you do indeed bring about a positive change in the people, events and situations around you. See the world, not as a separate realm over which you have greater or lesser effect, but as a mirror, reflecting not just your thoughts, but you. 12) Expecting the world to change, without changing you is like looking into a mirror and expecting the reflection to smile first. The world simply will never change, until you change. 13) Begin to realize that your experience of life is nothing but a reflection of the person you are

• No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We will talk about almost anyone about our physical health, even our sex lives, but bring depression, anxiety or grief , and the expression on the other person would probably be "get me out of this conversation" • We can distract our feelings with too much wine, food or surfing the internet, • Therapy is far from one-sided; it happens in a parallel process. Everyday patients are opening up questions that we have to think about for ourselves, • "The only way out is through" the only way to get out of the tunnel is to go through, not around it • Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of "feeling felt" • Attachment styles are formed early in childhood based on our interactions with our caregivers. Attachment styles are significant because they play out in peoples relationships too, influencing the kind of partners they pick, (stable or less stable), how they behave in a relationship (needy, distant, or volatile) and how the relationship tend to end (wistfully, amiably, or with an explosion) • The presenting problem, the issue somebody comes with, is often just one aspect of a larger problem, if not a red herring entirely. • "Help me understand more about the relationship" Here, here's trying to establish what’s known as a therapeutic alliance, trust that has to develop before any work can get done. • In early sessions is always more important for patients to feel understood than it is for them to gain any insight or make changes. • We can complain for free with a friend or family member, People make faulty narratives to make themselves feel better or look better in the moment, even thought it makes them feel worse over time, and that sometimes they need somebody else to read between the lines. • Here-and-now, it is when we work on what’s happening in the room, rather than focusing on patient's stories. • She didn't call him on his bullshit, which this makes patients feel unsafe, like children's whose parent's don’t hold them accountable • What is this going to feel like to the person I’m speaking to? • Neuroscientists discovered that humans have brain cells called mirror neurons, that cause them to mimic others, and when people are in a heightened state of emotion, a soothing voice can calm their nervous system and help them stay present • Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth. • The things we protest against the most are often the very things we need to look at • How easy it is, I thought, to break someone’s heart, even when you take great care not to. • The purpose on inquiring about people's parent s is not to join them in blaming, judging or criticizing their parents. In fact it is not about their parents at all. It is solely about understanding how their early experiences informed who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present (and not wear psychological clothing that no longer fits) • But personality disorders lie on a spectrum. People with borderline personality disorder are terrified of abandonment, but for some that might mean feeling anxious when their partners don’t respond to texts right away; for others that may mean choosing to stay in volatile, dysfunctional relationships rather than being alone. • In therapy we aim for self compassion (am I a human?) versus self esteem (Am I good or bad: a judgment) • The techniques we use are a bit like the type of brain surgery in which the patient remains awake throughout the procedure, as the surgeons operate, they keep checking in with the patient: can you feel this? can you say this words? They are constantly calibrating how close they are to sensitive regions of the brain, and if they hit one, they back up so as not to damage it.

The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time,’ Petrus continued. ‘The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the good fight.

Express Gratefulness AS A FAMILY, WE resolve to weed out daily those attitudes of ungratefulness that sneak in and bring with them an air of discontent. For instance, around our house we are not allowed to say, “I’m bored.” It is an expression of ungratefulness with a person’s surroundings and a complaining attitude with the idea that one must be constantly doing something fun or entertaining in order to be happy.

The Gems did not nag or complain, did not get periods or PMT, did not get pregnant, did not get body odour or hair, did not have discharge or bad breath, no shit or urine, did not get spots, did not suffer from diseases or headaches, did not have annoying bad habits, never farted, belched, vomited or picked their noses, did not need drugs or alcohol, did not need gifts such as jewellery, flowers, chocolate and money, did not need to shop, did not have piercings or tattoos, had no capacity to willingly lie or be fake, were never disloyal, were always eager to do any task required by their owner, sexual or non-sexual, did all the housework and cooking without complaint, were produced in the form of the perfect woman in the eyes of each client, did not constantly require their man to tell them they loved them, but most of all they did not age.

January 21 RECALL WHAT GOD REMEMBERS “Thus says the Lord: ‘I remember . . . the kindness of your youth . . . .’” Jeremiah 2:2     Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Does everything in my life fill His heart with gladness, or do I constantly complain because things don’t seem to be going my way? A person who has forgotten what God treasures will not be filled with joy. It is wonderful to remember that Jesus Christ has needs which we can meet—“Give Me a drink” (John 4:7). How much kindness have I shown Him in the past week? Has my life been a good reflection on His reputation?     God is saying to His people, “You are not in love with Me now, but I remember a time when you were.” He says, “I remember . . . the love of your betrothal . . .” (Jeremiah 2:2). Am I as filled to overflowing with love for Jesus Christ as I was in the beginning, when I went out of my way to prove my devotion to Him? Does He ever find me pondering the time when I cared only for Him? Is that where I am now, or have I chosen man’s wisdom over true love for Him? Am I so in love with Him that I take no thought for where He might lead me? Or am I watching to see how much respect I get as I measure how much service I should give Him?     As I recall what God remembers about me, I may also begin to realize that He is not what He used to be to me. When this happens, I should allow the shame and humiliation it creates in my life, because it will bring godly sorrow, and “godly sorrow produces repentance . . .” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

loser. A new car was the reward for years of self-denial and hard work, as the Cadillac ads were constantly making clear: ‘Here is the man who has earned the right to sit at this wheel.’ Most families gradually let go of their traditional puritan sobriety. Historian William Leach described the development of a ‘culture of desire that confused the good life with goods’. His colleague David M. Potter complained as early as 1954 that modern society expected a man ‘to consume his quota of goods – of automobiles, of whiskey, of television sets – by maintaining a certain standard of living, and it regards him as a “good guy” for absorbing his share, while it snickers at the prudent, self-denying, abstemious thrift that an earlier generation would have respected’. This too signified a

Chew like a Cow I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. —PSALM 119:15     We want God’s time. But are we willing to give Him a portion of our day, our thoughts? Meditation takes effort, discipline, and the willingness to make space for God. We are in so much of a hurry that we just can’t seem to fit meditation into our busy schedules. Oh, most of us want an intimate relationship with the Lord, but are we ready to give of our time? After all…we are busy. We’ve got to make more money, buy bigger toys, and race our children from one activity to another. I get tired just thinking about all the activities, don’t you? Those activities and the scrambling we do to get from one to the next start to breed impatience. I’ve even heard people complain at a fast-food restaurant that they need to speed up the service! No wonder we aren’t able to meditate on God’s Word. We are in too much of a hurry. Contrast this idea of constantly hurrying with the idea given in today’s verse. It says we are to meditate on God’s precepts. To meditate means to dwell on a passage. Sort of like a cow chewing her cud. Why do cows spend so much time chewing their cud? Cows first fill their stomachs with grass and other food. Then they begin the long chew-and-rechew process. It seems painfully slow, but this process turns the food into rich, creamy milk. Time consuming? Yes. But it’s a must if you want good milk. That’s the way it is with us Christians. If we want to grow, we must slow down and meditate on God’s principles. We need to read His precious truths, then ponder their meaning and influence and wonder. Take comfort in knowing that there is rest and renewal for all of us when we meditate on God’s precepts. Prayer: Father God, thank You for giving me a quiet time so I can meditate on Your words. Your principles have given me such peace—for one thing, I’ve wanted to slow down. Amen.   Action: Slow down—meditate. Chew on God’s Word and truths.

Complaining     “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances” (Philippians 4:11).     God hates complaining. In the Old Testament, God rescued the Israelites from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. They had a miraculous escape through the Red Sea and were on their way to the Promised Land. Yet only two of the original group actually arrived at the final destination. The rest perished in the desert. Why? One contributing factor was their complaining.   First, they complained that they had no food so God graciously provided manna. This was food that miraculously appeared each morning for them to collect for their families for the day. However, it wasn’t long before they complained about the manna. They even went so far as to say that they preferred their lives of slavery in Egypt to another day of eating manna.   I’m disgusted by their ungratefulness. They were a complaining, grumbling bunch that couldn’t see how good they actually had it. They were constantly looking for the bad in their situation instead of focusing on how God had favoured them, heard their cries, saved them from slavery, and provided for them on their way to the Promised Land.   However, it’s easy for me to pass judgment on them as I read about their story in the Bible. It’s obvious to me what they did wrong. But I was recently convicted of my own behaviour. Some days I am no better than those complainers.   I can think specifically of a job I received. This job was a miracle from God in itself. My two co-workers had been waiting over three years to get this job – I had just applied a month before. It was only part-time hours so it allowed me to continue to pursue my other interests and hobbies. It was close to my home, within the hours that my children were at school and doing what I love to do – teach.   However, when I was first offered the job I complained about the topic I would be teaching – accounting. It was not my first love. I would have preferred to teach creative writing or marketing – something fun. But accounting? I balked. Then I complained about the cost of parking. Then I complained that I had to share an office. Then I complained that my mailbox was too high, the water was too cold, the photocopier was too far away, the computer was too slow – well, you get the point. Instead of focusing on the answer to prayer, I focused on the little irritants about which to complain.   Finally, I started to complain about the students – one particular student. She would come to class with a snarl and sit in the back of the classroom with her arms crossed, feet up and a scowl that would scare crows away. It seemed to me that she not only hated the topic I was teaching, but she also hated the teacher.   Each day, I returned home and complained to my husband about this particular student. Things didn’t improve. She became more and more despondent and even poisoned the entire class with her sickly attitude. I complained more. I complained to other teachers and my friends; anyone who dared to ask the question, “How do you enjoy teaching?”  

Perhaps the most important thing I came to understand during my decade at HoJo's was that Americans had extremely open palates compared to French diners. They were willing to try items that lay outside their normal range of tastes. If they liked the food, that was all that mattered. I wasn't constantly battling ingrained prejudices as I would have been in France, where doing something as simple as adding carrots to boeuf bourguignon could have gotten me guillotined, not because carrots make the dish taste bad (they are great), but because it wouldn't be the way a boeuf was supposed to be made. In France, unless a dish was prepared exactly "right," people would know and complain. In the States, if it tasted good, then fine, the customer was happy. A whole new world of culinary possibilities had opened up before me.

One of Michael’s favourite pastimes was hauling books down from his shelves and reading to me, or pointing out comments he had made on the flyleaves. The astringent Brigid Brophy never failed to amuse him. Her invective, he claimed, “would put anybody in a good temper. It’s my favourite cure for any kind of depression.” Michael read out a newspaper clipping reporting an apology concerning something Brophy had written that the press council deemed pornographic. A reader had complained about her article on Lucretius, the newspaper report noted: “Referring to the Latin language Ms. Brophy wrote, ‘yet, though non-colloquial Latin is rhetorical and declamatory because its sounds ooze forth, though its meaning has to be teased out, tension and internal contradiction are inherent in the language. I can’t believe it didn’t create in its users a psychological predisposition to tension like masturbating with one hand while playing chess with the other.” We roared. “It’s hard to beat. It makes me laugh like anything,” Michael said. He spoke of Brigid Brophy constantly. “It’s wonderful,” he chortled.

Will they achieve a uniformity in censorship methods among the various regimes?” “Not uniformity. They will create a system in which the methods support and balance one another in turn....” The Director General invites you to examine the planisphere hanging on the wall. The varied color scheme indicates: the countries where all books are systematically confiscated; the countries where only books published or approved by the State may circulate; the countries where existing censorship is crude, approximate, and unpredictable; the countries where the censorship is subtle, informed, sensitive to implications and allusions, managed by meticulous and sly intellectuals; the countries where there are two networks of dissemination: one legal and one clandestine; the countries where there is no censorship because there are no books, but there are many potential readers; the countries where there are no books and nobody complains about their absence; the countries, finally, in which every day books are produced for all tastes and all ideas, amid general indifference. “Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,” Arkadian Porphyrich says. “What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks. To be sure, repression must also allow an occasional breathing space, must close an eye every now and then, alternate indulgence with abuse, with a certain unpredictability in its caprices; otherwise, if nothing more remains to be repressed, the whole system rusts and wears down. Let’s be frank: every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a situation of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify constantly the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress. The wish to write things that irk the established authorities is one of the elements necessary to maintain this equilibrium. Therefore, by a secret treaty with the countries whose social regime is opposed to ours, we have created a common organization, with which you have intelligently agreed to collaborate, to export the books banned here and import the books banned there.” “This would seem to imply that the books banned here are allowed there, and vice versa....” “Not on your life. The books banned here are superbanned there, and the books banned there are ultrabanned here. But from exporting to the adversary regime one’s own banned books and from importing theirs, each regime derives at least two important advantages: it encourages the opponents of the hostile regime and it establishes a useful exchange of experience between the police services.” “The

What’s the plan? “We run.” Daniel informed her with all due sincerity. “Huh. One day soon can the plan involve a touch more complexity? Not that I’m co9mplaining or anything.” “Complain, you? Never. You’re a constant delight.

If you constantly complain about what kind of year your team is having, maybe sports has become your god. What we complain about reveals what really matters to us. Whining shows what has power over us. Whining, in many ways, is the opposite of worshiping the Lord. Worship is when we glorify God for who he is and acknowledge what he has done for us, but whining is ignoring who God is and forgetting what he has done for us.

For example, if your child is constantly looking at their cell phone while talking to you, you need to model the proper way to have a conversation and do not look at your cell phone when you are speaking to others. If you are always complaining and finding fault with yourself or those around you, your child will learn to do the same. Judgments are crucial—both positive and negative—and can have a lasting impact on a child. Even if you do not believe it, learn to act it.

The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect.

whether a firm’s senior executives and directors have been buying or selling shares. There can be legitimate reasons for an insider to sell—diversification, a bigger house, a divorce settlement—but repeated big sales are a bright red flag. A manager can’t legitimately be your partner if he keeps selling while you’re buying. Are they managers or promoters?      Executives should spend most of their time managing their company in private, not promoting it to the investing public. All too often, CEOs complain that their stock is undervalued no matter how high it goes—forgetting Graham’s insistence that managers should try to keep the stock price from going either too low or too high.8 Meanwhile, all too many chief financial officers give “earnings guidance,” or guesstimates of the company’s quarterly profits. And some firms are hype-o-chondriacs, constantly spewing forth press releases boasting of temporary, trivial, or hypothetical “opportunities.

On the outside, people think having hot, immortal guys constantly wanting your attention would be something no sane girl could possibly complain about,” she mutters while pinching the bridge of her nose.

We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good. Then we deplore the fact that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experience that God has given to others, and we consider this lament to be pious. We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

Solitude smacks frighteningly of abandonment and this feels wholly unacceptable. As a matter of fact, many of us mothers subconsciously craft our days in such a way that we are rarely alone. We do this because deep down we are terrified to settle down for a moment, to reflect on our lives and our feelings. You can recognize us from a mile away. We are the extremely busy ones. The moms who constantly exude frustration because we simply can’t seem to get enough done in a day, even though half of that stuff doesn’t really need to get done. We clean too much. We stay at work too long. We complain that we can’t slow down because too many issues are pressing down on us all at once.