Stop Complaining: All of Life is Holy Ground

Rabbi Lisa Levenberg

Erev Rosh HaShanah - Monday, September 29, 2008

I complain. I complain about drivers who take up two parking spaces; about how Costco doesn’t sell 2-liter bottles of soda, only cans; about how long it has taken the repair company to determine that they will never be able to fix my oven (six months, thank you very much); and about the unfathomable number and variety of yellow pages that are delivered to my home.

Like most of you, I’m a garden-variety complainer, kvetching about the little nuisances that I encounter during the course of the day, punctuated now and then with a broadside about our country’s energy policies, or lack thereof. When it comes to airing my grievances, I simply can’t compete with a Mr. Bruce Silverman, who wrote an eBook called “How to Complain for Fun and Profit,” or with Dr. Ellen Phillips, author of “Shocked, Appalled, and Dismayed: How to Write Complaint Letters.” And I don’t hold a candle to the famously miserable Alexander, whom you may remember from “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”

But even these master complainers pale in comparison to the great kvetchers of our people’s history. No, I’m not talking about Seinfeld or even the stereotypical Jewish mother. I’m talking about the greatest of the Torah’s leaders, Moses himself, together with the unmanageable hordes of Israelites he was charged with guiding through the wilderness, and even occasionally, as it were, the Holy One.

In the Book of Numbers, which I sometimes playfully call the “Are We There Yet?” book of the Torah, the people complain about the food, God complains about the people, tribal leaders complain about Moses, and Moses complains about the burden of leadership.

The people cry out, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now are souls are dried up—there is nothing at all but this manna!” They continue in this vein, finally reaching the zenith of ingratitude: “If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt! Oh why did we ever leave Egypt?” In the face of this outcry, Moses bitterly calls out to God, “Why have you afflicted your servant? Why have you laid the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive them? Did I bear them, that you should say, ‘carry them in your bosom, like a wet-nurse carries a sucking baby? If this is going to be my lot, please, kill me now!”

So when we complain, we are certainly in good company. And let’s admit it: sometimes complaining is fun! In a new group of people, an idle complaint about the traffic or the local sports team is a handy way to break the ice. At work, complaining about deadlines, projects, co-workers, or even just the copy machine is a time-honored way of establishing camaraderie. Psychologist Barbara Held argues that complaining yields more profound benefits as well. In her book “Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching,” Held urges us to resist “the tyranny of the positive,” those social forces that compel us to pretend everything is okay when it isn’t, and to answer “fine,” when we aren’t. She suggests that “creative complaining” frees us from this oppressive pattern, enabling us to forge more sincere relationships as we allow others to better understand and help us.

At the same time, it’s important for us to understand what we lose through our chronic, low-level complaining, and the spiritual danger that being a terminal complainer poses to us.

First, in addition to being vaguely tedious and annoying, our complaints reflect a lack of appreciation for our bounty. Just as the Israelites complained about the tedium of the manna which was provided in abundance every day, we—every one of us—live lives of abundance and blessing, in matters both great and small. In my favorite poem, “The Life of a Day” by Tom Hennen, he remarks that most days pass by unnoticed, unless they are “wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills a lost traveler and bunches of cattle.” This phenomenon of most days “passing by unnoticed” happens to us all. We love to boast about our weather to visitors, but generally find some trifle to complain about anyway. In my comprehensive research for tonight’s talk, I turned to, yes, weather.com. Did you know that in Los Gatos, the mean temperature on the coldest day of the year is 47 degrees? And yet, how often does it occur to me to say, “Look, another temperate day. That makes 217 in a row! Thanks, God!” As Jewish songwriter Craig Taubman writes, “Ev’ry second, ev’ry minute, ev’ry hour, ev’ry day…all of it is holy ground.”

At the same time that much of our complaining is directed at minutiae like traffic, weather, and talk radio, the great majority of our complaining, ironically enough, is about those very things that are most precious to us, that define us, that give our lives meaning: every day, we complain, in jest and in earnest, about our family; our loved ones; our careers or our work in the community; the schools our children learn in and the synagogue that upholds our heritage; and this wonderful country that, imperfect as it is, still represents an optimistic view of humanity and its potential. Sometimes we even complain about our children in a mistaken idea that this is somehow a polite way to respond to a compliment: “Your Becky is such a great athlete!” “Oh, but you should see what it takes to get her to do her homework! What a pain!” By kvetching instead of kvelling, we lose sight of the fact that, as Taubman writes, “ev’ry he, ev’ry she, ev’ry what, ev’ry who,” is likewise holy ground. This “attitude of gratitude” can transform us from being habitual kvetchers toward greater awareness of the small beauties and bounties we encounter every day.

Second, our complaining can lead to a loss of perspective. To go into a rage because we were seated at a bad table or indulge in a sulk because our name is continually misspelled reflects our forgetfulness that, unfortunately, sometimes really terrible things do happen. As so many in our community have experienced—some all too recently— truly devastating tragedies can strike at any moment. Let us save our bitterness, our railing anger, our sense of overwhelming injustice for those moments that call for them. Rabbi Uzi Weingarten describes a scene in New York City shortly after 9/11. The customer in front of him, shopping for Rosh Hashanah, was distraught that the store had sold out of poppyseed babka—only chocolate was left. She complained loudly and persistently that only poppyseed would do, until Rabbi Weingarten gently reminded her, “Ma’am, we have our health and our lives. Many today cannot say the same.” She quieted herself and murmured, “The chocolate will be fine.”

Finally, and most importantly, complaining is taking the easy way out. Idle complaining is a way of shirking responsibility, avoiding taking action, and shrugging off the tremendous power each of us has to shape our lives. The most amazing gift that God gave humanity is free will—the ability and responsibility to make choices that determine the course of our futures. During the High Holy Days, we imagine our names being inscribed in the Book of Life, and are starkly aware that it is our deeds, the actions that we choose, that will dictate what will be written. In almost every situation, we have choices about the world we face and how we react to it. While we don’t have control over everything in the world, we do, for the most part, choose our lives. We choose where we live. We choose that crazy commute. We choose those ungodly hours. We choose those competitive schools. Except for the ridiculously good luck of winning the lottery or the tragedy of untimely loss and illness, our daily irritations are byproducts of the life we choose. When our irritations and our burdens start to outweigh our blessings, God has granted us the power to make different choices.

So, for those three reasons, complaining impoverishes our spirits. But come on, Rabbi, what could one little bit of complaining hurt? I don’t complain all the time—but with the hassles of this construction project, I just need to blow off some steam now and then! When we engage in the same types of thinking, or the same types of speaking, we reinforce those patterns, as in the clichéd but still wonderful quote from Charles Reade: “Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.” The more we complain, the more we turn ourselves into complainers. Not only do we make ourselves better and more practiced complainers, we actually weaken our ability to respond to difficulty in other, more productive ways. Breaking this cycle was the goal of Pastor Will Bowen, author of A Complaint-Free World. Two years ago, he challenged his parishioners to go for 21 days without complaining, using a purple wristband as a reminder. Every time you complain, you switch the bracelet to the other wrist. Even though it was his own idea, it took Bowen five months to achieve success in his own challenge of 21 complaint-free days.

Fortunately for us, choosing to go complaint-free doesn’t mean stewing in silence, or Pollyannaishly pretending not to mind when things go wrong. Instead, we have two powerful alternatives—serenity and action. Maya Angelou starkly lays out our options in her prosaic variation on the Serenity Prayer: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”

In the business psychology book How the Way we Talk Can Change the Way we Work, authors Kegan and Lahey propose that we transform the way we handle problematic situations, from the language of complaint to the language of commitment. The language of commitment means that we are personally invested in working toward a positive outcome, and is reflected in how we express our reactions to a negative situation. Instead of complaining, we can take the next mental steps: What outcome would I like to see? What action can I take to help bring that outcome about? This principle of the language of commitment, while it may have been coined only a few years ago, is powerfully modeled for us in the actions of Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, who comes upon Moses keeping the Israelites waiting in long lines as he adjudicates their conflicts one by one. Rather than simply complaining about Moses’ ineffective management style, Jethro demonstrates a results-oriented solution of responsible delegation that recognizes the humanity and the holiness of both Moses and the Israelites. To use a banal example in our own day: instead of saying, “It’s freezing out here again!” we can say, “When I get home, I’m going to put an extra sweater in the car, so I’ll have it if I’m cold tomorrow.” To use a more substantive case, this is the approach utilized in our community organizing group, SHOC. Instead of railing against injustice, SHOC identifies the community’s commitments and pursues defined next steps to improve those issues, recognizing one more way that “all of life is holy ground.”

Tonight, as we say goodbye to a year of joys and of sorrows, of satisfactions and of disappointments, we welcome the New Year with hope and optimism—not only for the goodness we wish to encounter in the months ahead, but also for the goodness we wish to add to the world. In the coming year, we will strive to increase our gratitude and awareness in our approach to the world. God instructed Moses, “Take your shoes off, you’re on holy ground.” May we extend the circle of blessing, turning from criticism to appreciation and from complaint to commitment, recognizing that all of life is holy ground.

SHANA TOVA!