“Citizens hate living there, and if they have to move away on business or adventure—or more usually until some statute of limitations runs out—can’t wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more”
~ Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
People can be weird like that. Sometimes, we enjoy disliking something just as much as we enjoy liking something.
When you get down to it, people seem to really love complaining.
While I wouldn’t necessarily say that that’s a completely terrible thing, I do wonder if perhaps it can lead to some unhealthy behavior, unfortunate beliefs, or ill consequences. After all, words do have quite a bit of influence over us, no matter how jokingly we say them. Who knows? If we say something enough times, maybe it’ll become true. And you never know when an insult or a complaint said in jest might be taken as truth and cause real damage.
Again, this quote was written down while I was listening to the audiobook, so I apologize if the formatting is not exactly the same as it appears in the printed book.
I think you make a good point, particularly about offhand insults or complaints that others take to heart. However, I will counter by saying that complaining is sometimes cathartic as well. Sometimes it really helps me to get all my complaints out into words, thereby releasing them or at least naming them, which then allows me to focus on whatever I actually have to get done.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, though, my boss teases me, half-seriously, for being overly pessimistic when talking about the current state of our project, and I've certainly noticed my casual complaints contributing to others' bad moods, so I've been trying to curtail this habit somewhat.
That's true. Complaining does sometimes help to diffuse bad feelings somewhat so they don't cause more harm by building up into something stronger. Maybe it all depends on when you look at it from the speaker's perspective or the listener's perspective.
DeleteAs a less serious example, I love to complain about shows and characters that I don't like, but Alice hates it when I do that, sometimes even when it's a character or show she doesn't like that much either. When I start going at them, She feels the need to defend them, and that can lead to arguments. So overall, I try not to do that much anymore, even though pointing out all the flaws in these shows helps me not complain as much when she wants to watch them:)