I'm never sure what's expected of me when people complain. Or no, scratch that. I'm not sure what I'm meant to do when people create for themselves unhappy situations and then come crying about it.
You did not just stumble into your life by accident. Presumably, there were several crossroads until here where you made certain choices, trade-offs, and assessments. Life does not just happen to you, and you disregard that vital sense of agency at your own peril.
I don't know exactly where I got tired of her complaining to me. Might've been further back than I care to remember. After all, sympathy and common decency so often serve to guilt us into inappropriate submission. Because there is a certain guilt. By all accounts, this woman is trapped in unfortunate situations and while I've spent long hours disseminating with her her situation, I can't help but admit (quietly, privately, to myself) that they are of her own making. Not just in the past, but are chosen actively in the present.
She has about her this sense of things happening to her, but seldom of doing things or being in charge of things. Which does beg the question - if you're not in charge of your own life, who the hell is? It also makes me wonder how much sympathy I can afford, and moreover, how long before this sort of thinking seeps into my own life.
Much as we like to disregard this fact, we take after the people we hold in close proximity. How many times can I listen to you talk about life happening at you before I start going about my own days in the same manner? As I believe I've made quite evident on my blog here, I refuse to be someone life happens to.
So I become mean. Uncaring. Cold. And a small slew of other words we use to describe people (women, in particular, because women are expected to be more agreeable and "nice" than men, on average), but what can one do?
You know, I wonder sometimes about compassion, whether we're going around with a definition of it that's a little wrong. Would it really be more compassionate to sit and make sympathetic noises every time one of these chronic self-flagellators comes to complain?
"People don't want your advice, they just want your sympathy."
And I try as I can to offer it, but nobody said anything about it being limitless. And frankly, I fail to see it as helpful, indulging people by commiserating in the same shitty situations they've kept themselves trapped in for years.
It doesn't seem that useful to me to go "poor you" knowing full well they'll be back in a week or two with the same bleeding problem, having made no effort to change their situation. In fact, it seems actively unhelpful keeping them in a constant supply of "poor you"s.
It's not "nice" to anyone encouraging people to stay down.
We do it, of course, so that when our time in the mud comes, they'll provide the proverbial shoulder for us. You bitch about your work/husband/family and I bitch about mine, isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Except, whatever happened to finding for ourselves jobs, husbands and families we don't feel the need to bitch about on a regular basis?
I don't personally feel much call to bitch about what I do or who I spend time with. And am reminded frequently of how lucky I am to have that. How fortunate - great, more inexplicable good fortune that I'm expected to feel guilty about, even more fuel for these people.
"Of course, there's lucky bastards like me who don't have anything to complain about (or who perhaps simply refuse to engage in that self-sabotaging practice of poisoning the social well), but I'm not one of them. I just have no luck. That's for other people. The people with good lives."
Obviously, there's some tremendous privilege across the landscape. I'm reminded every day of how lucky I am to have been born here and at this moment in time and to be wanted and all those things I frequently write about. But other than that? I do think a good deal of selection and effort comes into it.
Striving.
In other words, I don't attribute this life I seldom complain about to sheer good luck. And I know well what it is to reap validation from other people's lukewarm commiseration. I know it doesn't fill my cup. So I have tried to build a life for myself where my validation and sense of self-worth are not reliant on such practices.
Lucky me...?
I don't consider myself particularly responsible for the misfortunes in somebody else's life. Don't like your job? You're young. Find something you like. (Not always appropriate, but it is in this case) You're not happy in your relationship? Then get the hell out. But don't go making those choices and trade-offs willy-nilly, then blame everyone but the person responsible the rest of your life.
It's not a nice way to be.
Why is this here? Because even as I may struggle at times with physical minimalism, I think that's only one aspect of a broader mindframe. I believe minimalism is about crafting with intention a life in which you are proud and content and don't frequently complain about. I think it's about reducing the noise that keeps us from achieving that higher purpose in this life and navigating social relationships outside of the status quo. But what do I know?
