Rabbi Janet Marder

February 12, 2010

I Can't Complain

A while back, like a message from the cosmic delivery service, a new book arrived in my mail at Beth Am. It was called “A Complaint-Free World.” This book was the outgrowth of a sermon given in the summer of 2006 by the Reverend Will Bowen, a minister in Kansas City , Missouri .

On that Sunday morning Reverend Bowen spoke to his congregation about the toll that negative speech takes on our world. He reflected, first, on the amount of whining he heard in his church – mostly about trivial things, such as the choice of hymns at the Sunday service, or the fact that some people dressed too informally at the church’s Saturday night service. (I have to admit that I enjoyed learning that synagogues don’t have a monopoly on this sort of conversation.)

The average person, he said, complains about twenty times a day. “The one thing we can agree on,” said Reverend Bowen, “is there’s too much complaining.” Then he offered his congregants a challenge: could they go for 21 days without complaining, criticizing, gossiping or using sarcasm? He chose 21 days because, he said, three weeks is the average amount of time it takes to break a habit.

Reverend Bowen reported that the idea for this “no-complaint” pledge came to him one morning in the shower. I imagine that members of the clergy often fantasize about an end to whining, but Reverend Bowen did something to make his fantasy come true.  At the end of his sermon, he passed out purple rubber bracelets to the congregation. He asked them to put the bracelet on either wrist. Then, he said, if you catch yourself complaining about something, you take off the bracelet, switch to the other wrist and start counting all over again. The idea is go for 21 days without having to move the bracelet. It’s that simple.

Of course, it turned out to be not so simple at all. Reverend Bowen himself had to switch the bracelet once or twice even during his sermon, because he found himself complaining about the Kansas City Royals. As the weeks went by, he discovered that he was able to control his complaining very well in the presence of certain people, but had much more trouble with others, whose own negativity seemed to be contagious.

Reverend Bowen told interviewers that it took him about three and a half months before he managed 21 complaint-free days. He said it takes some people five, six or even seven months to do it. But the effort is worth it, he says. You feel better about life. The people in your life enjoy being around you more. Your relationships improve.

One important question you might have: does this rule apply to silent complaints uttered only in your own mind? Fortunately not. Reverend Bowen was only concerned about voiced complaints that pollute the atmosphere around us. But the act of controlling your speech, he said, does have an impact on your thoughts.

The “no complaints” campaign soon spread beyond his church and became a worldwide phenomenon – a book, a website, and, naturally, a “no complaint store” that provides bracelets and other supportive apparatus to those who want to take the challenge.

Does this idea annoy you? Do you feel the urge to complain about it? You’re not alone. Some people, mostly men, objected to the idea of having to wear a bracelet – it made them feel self-conscious, especially at business meetings. Answer: it doesn’t have to be a bracelet. It can be a rubber band. It doesn’t even have to be on your wrist – you can keep a small object in your pocket and transfer it to another pocket when you catch yourself griping about something.

Other people, on a more serious note, objected to the basic philosophy Reverend Bowen was promoting. Complaining is not necessarily bad, they said. Expressing our emotions is a useful outlet. Putting on a fake happy face is not a healthy way to live. A small group of psychologists, in fact, has challenged what they call “the tyranny of the positive attitude” – especially the “positive psychology” movement’s exclusive focus on cultivating optimism, gratitude, positive thinking and cheerfulness.

At a symposium titled “The (Overlooked) Virtues of Negativity,” some psychologists argued that “a little whining now and then is not such a bad thing. Pessimism, in some circumstances, may have its place. And the unrelieved pressure to be upbeat…may gloss over individual needs and differences, and may make some people feel worse instead of better” [“Seeing Pessimism’s Place in a Smiley-Faced World, NY Times, August 15, 2000]. 

Dr. Barbara Held, a clinical psychologist at Bowdoin College , wrote her own book, entitled, “Stop Smiling Start Kvetching.” I could be wrong, but I suspect that she is Jewish. "Life is very hard," Dr. Held said. "If you're having a hard time with something, it can make it harder to cope if you feel pressure to act O.K. when you're not." Dr. Held and others argue that for certain people, negative venting and being pessimistic is a more effective coping strategy. Forcing people to act like optimists when they’re not will only make them more anxious.

Along these same lines, I’ve come across a couple of research studies that showed that people forced to put their feet into ice water reported feeling less pain when they were able to complain to a bystander about it – or in one case, when they were permitted to use profanities. (You can try this at home, if you like.)

The most serious complaint brought against this “no-complaint” philosophy is that it leads to passivity in the face of injustice. Here’s what the Reverend Vern Barnet, who writes a regular column for the Kansas City Star, had to say about it. His complaints deserve to be heard in detail, I think:

“…I regard the “no-complaint” movement, no matter how well-meaning, as anti-gay. It is also anti-black, anti-peace, anti-women, and anti-justice in general. It has no religious legitimacy. The Hebrew prophets were complainers. Jesus frequently ragged on the rich exploiting the poor. Muhammad confronted the selfishness he saw in his own society. One of the things I love about the Jewish tradition is its normalization of complaining, even arguing with God. I am embarrassed that no-complaint bracelets–five million so far distributed throughout the world–come from a well-meaning, but insufficiently thoughtful Kansas City congregation.

“Although needless complaining is not very helpful, this bracelet movement justifies thinking of religion as “the opiate of the people.” Get the churches to get people to shut up about what’s wrong with our political system, for example, and you can run the country the way you want. Would we even have a country except for complaints? By far, most of the text of the Declaration of Independence is a list of complaints and grievances.

 “….The original seven deadly sins are extravagance, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Complaining is not on the list. No, truth and justice are spiritual values. It is a religious obligation and a citizen’s duty to complain when injustice exists.”

A final objection to this “no-complaints” movement, which Reverend Barnet alludes to, is that it’s specifically incompatible with Judaism. Judaism is all about standing up to argue and protest wrongdoing. The Hebrew Bible contains plenty of laments, and a whole book called Lamentations. There is even a genre of psalms known as “psalms of complaint,” in which the speaker pours out his misery to God. And Jews, of course, invented the word “kvetch,” meaning “to complain persistently and whiningly,” from a German root meaning “to squeeze.” (By the way – in case you’re wondering, there is a website called “kvetch.com” where you can post your favorite complaints – preferably amusing ones – and the site owners promise you will feel much better.)

In his history of the Yiddish language, called “Born to Kvetch,” Michael Wex says that kvetching is intrinsic to Yiddish thought and complaining is a coping strategy developed over the centuries by European Jews living in the Diaspora -- “a way of exercising some small measure of control over an otherwise hostile environment.”  Yiddish is therefore “a language that likes to argue with everybody about everything,” he writes. As illustrations, Wex cites the scholars of the Talmud who, he said, “disagree 99.8 percent of the time” and a Yiddish phrase “"aftselakhis,” which basically means “the impulse to do things only because someone else doesn't want you to."

There is some merit in these objections to the “no complaints” campaign, but I would submit that most of them are just excuses we offer to avoid giving up a dearly-held habit. Yes, the Talmud is full of arguments, Jewish study is based upon lively dispute, and the Bible contains some laments – though it also overflows with words of comfort, strength and encouragement. Yes, the Yiddish language is full of curses and kvetches. Yes, the prophets uttered tirades against social injustice and our tradition commands us to act to remedy wrongdoing. Yes, if you’re depressed you need to talk about your feelings and get some help. Not at all what the Reverend Bowen was talking about.

I think we can all grasp what he was getting at in his sermon. He asked his congregants to think about the constant, habitual fault-finding that so many of us practice – the pervasive negativity we carry with us like a damp raincoat, the cynicism and irritation, the impulse to critique every experience and find it wanting. He meant the practice of carping about what’s wrong to no productive purpose. And here, as it happens, Jewish teaching is very much in harmony with what Reverend Bowen was trying to inspire.

Consider this: there is a halacha, a statement in the Jewish law code known as the Shulkhan Arukh, placed, appropriately, in a section called “Orach Chayim – the way of life,” because this section contains the foundations for living a good, fulfilling life. The statement is “Everything God does is for the best” [230:5].

The statement is drawn from a story in the Talmud [Berachot 60b] that goes like this: "Rabbi Akiva was accustomed to saying, "Everything God does is for the good." Once he was traveling far from home with a donkey, a rooster, and a candle. When night came he tried to find lodging in a nearby village, only to be turned away. Rabbi Akiva was forced to spend the night in the field, but he did not lament his fate. Instead he made his habitual remark: "Everything God does is for the best.”  Suddenly a strong wind came and blew out his candle, a cat ate his rooster, and a lion came and ate his donkey – don’t ask me where the lion came from -- but again, Rabbi Akiva's reaction was "Everything God does is for the best.”

Later that night a military regiment came and took the entire town captive, but Rabbi Akiva, who was sleeping in the field, with no bright light, no noisy rooster or donkey to attract attention, went unnoticed and was spared. When Rabbi Akiva realized what had happened he said – you guessed it: "Didn't I tell you that everything that God does is for the best?”

Another famous story in the Talmud [Ta’anit 21a] is about a character called Nachum Ish Gamzu, who happened to be Rabbi Akiva’s teacher. He was nicknamed “Ish Gamzu” – the “man of Gamzu” because whatever happened to him, he would say “gam zu l’tovah – this, too, is for the good.” Like Akiva, Nachum Ish Gamzu endures numerous trials but his favorite saying never deserts him. (Incidentally, I read somewhere that when Jerry Lewis’s television show was cancelled, on his last time on the air he quoted an old Jewish phrase that he said his mother had taught him – “gam zu-l’tovah; this, too, is for the good.”)

Or take this Chasidic story from the 18th century: A man once came to his rebbe with the following question: the Talmud says that “a person is supposed to bless God for the bad that happens to him just as he blesses God for the good.” How is this humanly possible? How can one receive troubles with the same equanimity as one receives joys? The rebbe answered, “Go to my student, Zusya – whatever befalls him, he is always contented and gracious. He will answer you.”

Rabbi Zusya, says the story, was a poor man in poor health, and he had a rather unpleasant wife. When the man sought him out and asked him his question, Rabbi Zusya looked at him in perplexity. “I don’t know why the rebbe sent you to me,” he said. “I’ve never had a bad day in my life!”

What are these stories trying to teach us? Do they seek to inculcate a dangerous passivity and fatalism? I think not. Our Sages caution, first of all, that this attitude of “gam zu l’tova” is not one we’re supposed to adopt towards other people’s troubles. Empathy and active aid are what’s called for when someone else is in need.

But when we ourselves are facing difficulties, our Sages want us to figure out a way to frame this situation in a positive way. Not so that we’ll do nothing and simply accept misery. But so that we can continue to live meaningfully, productively and with hope even in difficult situations. Gam zu-l’tova is essentially a creative response that keeps us from being paralyzed by gloom. Another one is “gam zeh ya’avor – this, too, shall pass.”

I think the tradition we’ve inherited is less about kvetching and more about giving us the strength to live well in hard times. It’s about challenging negative beliefs, adopting different patterns of thought and behavior. It involves teaching ourselves a different internal narrative and a different way of viewing the world – turning criticism, anger and irritation into compassion, humor, acceptance and patience.

If we can do this with serious problems, maybe we can also use this approach when it comes to trivial complaints – the garden variety kind that we all utter when we’re driving, stuck in a slow-moving line, or facing a person who for some reason pushes our buttons and annoys us.

Some people have learned how to do this. I know them – so do you, I bet. I hear about them, every now and then, when I meet with families following a death. I hear about a beloved man or woman in whose presence you simply felt better – happier, more contented – because they approached the world with such a positive stance of gratitude and appreciation.

Why am I talking about this subject tonight? Partly because I recently spent time with some people – not Beth Am members, of course – whose tendency to carp and kvetch made me think about how such behavior might be changed. And partly – here comes the self-disclosure – because I’ve been wearing one of those bracelets for the past few days. So far I’ve found it a useful reminder of the way I’d like to speak and act. I’ll let you know how it’s going – and I hope you’ll let me know how I’m doing. In the meantime, if you ask me how I feel tonight after the service, I’ll tell you the truth: I can’t complain.