A decent gripe, delivered with theatrical exasperation and met with a chorus of ‘Exactly!’ is surely one of life’s purest pleasures. It’s instant dopamine.
Whole careers have been built on this simple truth. Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David and Ricky Gervais, to name but a few, have made millions articulating the petty absurdities of modern life while audiences nod in delighted acquiescence.
It’s such a relief when someone else shares your thoughts. Your beliefs. Your low-level simmering rage at self-checkouts.
A dose of reflective listening means we are not mad, we are not alone and, very importantly, we’ve been heard.
Every Saturday, come rain or shine, I set off on a long dog walk with a friend and we put the world to rights. We moan for England (quite literally these days).
Three hours, 10,000 steps and several grievances aired later, we feel lighter and energised (no doubt the obligatory coffee helps too). It’s therapy, but cheaper. Cardiovascular, too. What’s not to love?
Here’s where I get twitchy though. Private moaning? Fine. It’s cathartic, necessary even. Public moaning about first-world trifles while the planet appears to be on fire? Less so.
I don’t have to tell you what an increasingly worrying world we live in. Every minute brings fresh alerts: war, atrocities, wild politics, climate chaos.
The internet delivers it all – uncensored, sometimes fake, and always relentless. It’s terrifying and exhausting but we can’t simply look away.
A Ukrainian friend texted me over the Christmas break. It was -20C in Kyiv. Her family had been without electricity for 50 hours straight after a Russian air attack.
The inside temperature had settled at a chilly three degrees and the water had frozen in the pipes. We wear our woolly hats, gloves and coats to sleep, she wrote, and pray for the electricity to come back on.
She sent me a photo of her family and friends sharing a cold New Year’s Eve meal by candlelight – the candles being out of necessity, not to create an ambiance. They are all smiling as best they can. It’s heartbreaking.
So when my local WhatsApp group erupted into a lengthy thread after someone posted their irritation at a passing dog walker putting a poo bag in their black bin, I saw red.
Yes, it’s annoying. No, it’s not a humanitarian crisis. Perspective, I suggested, might be useful here.
The irony of me moaning about moaning isn’t lost on me. But perhaps that’s the point.
Complain, by all means. Walk it out. Rant with friends. Bond over life’s nonsense. Just remember: not every irritation deserves centre stage. Some things are merely background noise. And some people, right now, would give anything for our first world problems.
- Shelley-Anne Salisbury is a mediator, writer and the editor of Suburb News, themediationpod.net
