On my way home from work, I was convinced that it had been a bad day. When I got home, I told my husband that I felt as if I had gotten a slight breather at lunch time, but otherwise was going at full steam, non-stop, without a single break.
And as I said it, the thought came to me, "Why are you complaining? You got to come home for lunch. You got to cuddle your children while your husband fixed you a meal. How could that not redeem any bad day you could possibly have?"
My mother and I have talked a lot this past year about how ungrateful we can be about our lives. Sometimes at work, I feel that all I hear is complaining. And I'm in a line of work where I get paid vacation, where I took 6 weeks off for maternity leave, where my bosses listen to me when things need to change, where my very job description engenders some sort of respect. In short, I mean that I'm not picking up feces every day, so where the heck do I get off complaining about it?
Our culture teaches us that external factors control how we feel, and that to do nothing and get paid for it (cough, cough - the Kardashians - cough, cough) is glamorous and desirable. My parents taught me that hard work is its own reward. That every job should be done well, from cleaning toilets to healing disease. That if you have work, you should feel blessed, because you are able to be productive and your life has meaning. And yet every day, I find myself complaining. I bet if most of you examine your conversation in general, whether it be texts, phone calls, face-to-face or even Facebook statuses, you will be shocked by the amount of complaining you do.
I'm not a New Year's Resolution-type person, never have been. As a friend of mine said recently, "If I feel that something needs to change, I just change it." Well, something needs to change in my life. I'm not planning on never complaining again, because goodness knows sometimes just having my husband or mom listen to my day makes everything better again. But I will try to be more grateful, to whine less, and to enjoy more.
Any takers?
Our culture teaches us that external factors control how we feel, and that to do nothing and get paid for it (cough, cough - the Kardashians - cough, cough) is glamorous and desirable. My parents taught me that hard work is its own reward. That every job should be done well, from cleaning toilets to healing disease. That if you have work, you should feel blessed, because you are able to be productive and your life has meaning. And yet every day, I find myself complaining. I bet if most of you examine your conversation in general, whether it be texts, phone calls, face-to-face or even Facebook statuses, you will be shocked by the amount of complaining you do.
I'm not a New Year's Resolution-type person, never have been. As a friend of mine said recently, "If I feel that something needs to change, I just change it." Well, something needs to change in my life. I'm not planning on never complaining again, because goodness knows sometimes just having my husband or mom listen to my day makes everything better again. But I will try to be more grateful, to whine less, and to enjoy more.
Any takers?
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