Complain-a-tain

I must've been a weird kid because I remember using that 'word' - complain-a-tain - when I was in elementary school. On the one hand, it's nice to know that I was so laid back at an early age that I had a name for people that complained too much. Of course, complaining is now a national pastime and may soon qualify as an Olympic sport, so I'm probably in the minority when I think that complaining is a bummer.

Don't get me wrong; I'll be the first to admit that I do my share of complaining - a lot of it happens in the car where I am subjected to a distinct lack of common sense on the part of various people who are piloting 2,000 bombs as if they were riding tricycles in the park. And then there are the teenagers - I'm talking about ours, not someone else's.

This article from 2007, chronicles one reporter's attempt to follow the lead of Pastor Will Bowen toward a complaint-free world. If you want your own purple bracelet, you can get it here. And while I think that moving toward a world with less complaining and more service to others is a noble and worthy goal, I'm not so sure that the prosperity message preached by Pastor Bowen's home organization - 1 Community Spiritual Center - is what the world needs.

But I can't get into that, because it might be construed as complaining...

I guess my feelings about complaining today, especially in light of the world with less complaining movement, centers around society's movement toward elevating self-esteem to the top of its collective wish list. Maslow and Rand must be celebrating in their respective resting places.

What do you think?

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