Complaining

I’ve written before about the silent retreat I attended in June.  One of the hardest things to get used to was eating silent meals with the other participants.  In fact, for quite a while, I found this very distasteful.  Silent eating was starting to feel better, when I encountered the dry and tough serving of salmon.  I bit in and thought, “This is the worst salmon I’ve ever tasted.”  Not only did I think it, but I had a very strong desire to say it. I didn’t of course.  Then, I took another bite.  Once again, I wanted to say, “This is the worst salmon I’ve ever tasted.”  And it didn’t end with the second bite. Or the third.  Actually, it was funny, the desire to complain was so strong.   I’ve thought about it a lot since.  What did I want/need to accomplish by sharing that tedious observation with another person?  Why do we need to complain?

I started off thinking about the positive elements of complaining:

• Complaining blows off steam, relieves pressure.
• Saying something out loud helps me better understand what I perceive and believe: it’s similar to talk therapy.

Then I looked at some negatives:

• Complaining can be a way of making me right and someone else wrong.
• It can be judgmental and mean.
• It can be a downer. (From a Google search, "Complaining is draining.")

I realized that a complaint can be the way to end an issue or a way to expand it. The salmon incident is one of my innocuous complaints, but it taught me a lot.  I see that my complaints can easily go by nearly unnoticed though I’m more likely now to notice when I’m in complaining mode.  I notice myself and others (especially others!) complaining in ways that sound judgmental, mean, or angry.  I notice how good it feels sometimes to complain about the behavior of others, even behavior that is none of my business.

I’m amused by the line, “This is the worst salmon I’ve ever tasted,” and I try to use it as an antidote to some of my complaining and a way to accept the complaining of others.  But I want to study complaining a bit more.  What is it's appeal?