Can You Just Stop Complaining?

This week on the podcast, we talked about chapters 3 and 4 of Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” and one of the concepts in those chapters was the idea that the act of complaining comes from the ego and is, in fact, a way for the ego to situate itself as superior to others. As we have discussed in previous episodes on this topic, the ego continually does things to set itself apart from others and to give itself more power. It likes to play the victim. The ego thrives on drama, and the more isolated one feels, the more different, or the more unique, then the stronger the ego becomes. Taking this idea a step further, Tolle tells us that when we complain, we are saying, by implication, that we are right and the other person (or situation) is wrong.

Tolle tells us that to go beyond the ego, we must stop reacting to it. We must stop complaining. But wait! We all complain sometimes, right? Does this mean we can’t ever say anything? That we have to put up with bad service or rude behavior? 

, No, Tolle tells us that there’s a difference between complaining and informing. Informing is passing on important information. It is all about facts, not feelings. There are no accusations. No guilt. No resentment. When you inform, you realize that it’s not personal, so there is no longer a compulsion to react as though it were. When you inform, you are simply letting the clerk know that they gave you the wrong change, or telling the waiter that the soup was cold. In contrast, a complaint is fraught with emotion, often in the form of offense or outrage. A complaint is accusatory. The ego feels insulted, put-upon, wronged. The two reactions are very different, and thus the outcome is also very different.

I find this notion intriguing. I wonder if any of us know just how often we complain. After talking recently with a friend, we both agreed we complain a lot. When my friend mentioned following a social media influencer who was taking part in a 21-day “no complaining” challenge, my immediate thought was, “Oh crap, it’s only 10 AM and I’ve already failed miserably!” Then I laughed and told my friend I didn’t think I could make it even one day. I complain a lot, and I know it.

I come from a long line of complainers. My family and I used to cringe at things my grandmother would say about other people. She was super critical of anyone who wasn’t like her, and even some who were. She would refer to women her age as “that old woman,” and make snide remarks about people’s weight or their clothing. It was embarrassing, but we loved her. My mother was much the same. In her later years, she has complained about every single person on the planet in one way or another. She complains about her food, other people’s hair, or how long she has to wait at the doctor’s office. Lately, I’ve written it off as a symptom of her dementia, but I’m not sure. She’s never happy; or maybe she’s only happy when she has something to complain about.

Over the last few years, I’ve caught myself repeating the same bad behavior. Complaining about waiting in line. Cursing at traffic. Put out by slow service or forgetful waiters. I’ve grumbled about perceived injustice, imagined slights, and honest mistakes. I’ve been judgmental and even rude. When I catch myself, I wince and think, “I sound just like my mother,” and I make a vow to stop. It never lasts long, because sooner or later, some other insignificant something will come along to “ruin” my day, and before I know it, I’m right back where I was before, complaining about everything that isn’t exactly the way I want it to be. 

 

“Ego takes everything personally,” Tolle tells us. And often, in the midst of my complaining, that’s exactly how I feel…as though the universe is out to get me. But of course, that is just my ego. I know this. And lately, I’ve been trying to stop myself (mid-complaint if I’m slow on the draw). Tolle assures us that the moment we become aware of the voice in our head as nothing more than a conditioned pattern (the ego), then that ego is weakened. We also know that whatever you have learned (like complaining), we can also unlearn.

 

I guess that means there is hope for me yet. Maybe someday complaining will no longer be a habit for me. I try to imagine a world in which no one complained. What a wonderful world that would be. I’m willing to give it a try. Are you?

 

I’d like to challenge you to go a day without complaining. Or maybe just see how long you can go without complaining. Can you go for an hour? A day? A week? More? Tell us about it in the comments below or join the conversation on our Facebook Chat Group.

Heard It on the Podcast - March 9

Did you miss a link we mentioned on the podcast? Here's a quick post we'll do every Wednesday to share any links or information from the podcast. We'll also keep a running post on the "Links from the Podcast" tab so you can refer back to any previous episode. Here's the links for this week:

9-MAR-2022

S2E11: A New Earth, Chapters 3 and 4

• Eckhart Tolle, "A New Earth": https://amzn.to/3hblVm4

And don't forget our sincere thanks to:

• Creative Audio Tech/Red Door Studios: http://www.creativeaudiotech.com

As an Amazon Affiliate, Modern Musings earns from qualifying purchases. 

All the World is a Stage

Hey everyone! On our podcast this week we are continuing our discussion on Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth”, and we are examining the concepts in chapter 3 “The Core of the Ego” and 4 “Role Playing: The Many Faces of the Ego.”

Role-playing: As a former Theatre teacher, the concept of role-playing stands out to me. Shakespeare wrote in one of his famous monologues, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” meaning that all humans have roles that they play in life. In his speech, Shakespeare presents the roles humans play as they age, while Tolle presents the different roles the ego plays throughout a human’s life. So, in a sense, roles within a role.

According to Shakespeare, there are seven roles or “ages” of man:

1. The baby: This age represents humans as helpless and innocent. They rely on others to help them survive the world.
2. The child: This age represents humans as they are young and idealistic. They are just venturing out of their house into the world to attend school.
3. The young man: This age represents a teenager hitting puberty and falling in love for the first time. Although still young and idealistic, they know a little bit more about life outside their parents’ house.
4. The soldier: This age represents a young adult venturing out of their parents’ house and earning a reputation with their first job. Shakespeare describes this age as quick to fight and quick to judge.
5. The justice: This age represents a somewhat older individual who is now working hard and earning money for themselves and their family.
6. The older man: This age represents retirement as a person grows older and thinner, but still wants to maintain their youthful appearance.
7. The old man: This age represents old age as humans begin to slip into their second childhood and become helpless and innocent. This age also represents the fact that life has come full circle. Humans start helpless and innocent, and they end helpless and innocent. Their last role to play is also childlike.

Within these roles, according to Tolle, the ego has its own roles to play, and most of them are attention-seeking roles. Tolle suggests that these roles start in childhood. Some very common attention-seeking roles that humans play are:

• The Villain: At a young age, these roles become apparent. The protagonist and the antagonist. The “good” guy and the “bad” guy. These roles are personified in every story ever made. In every Shakespeare play ever written. A common villain role is that of a criminal. Criminals often commit crimes to get caught. To get that attention that the ego looks for. Criminologists have tried to explain the motivations behind criminals going back centuries. Criminologists suggest that reasons for committing a crime include greed, anger, jealousy, revenge, or pride. All of these negative emotions relate to the attention-seeking ego. According to Tolle, “some egos perpetrate crimes in search of fame.” Negative attention is also attention.
• The Victim: This is a very common role in the sense that the attention the victim seeks is sympathy from others. In psychology, this could also be called a narcissist. Humans play the victim to keep the attention on them and only them. “Victims” often claim the negative actions of others or society contribute to them being the way they are.

Letting go of self-definitions is one way Tolle suggests that humans shed the roles they have chosen to play in their life. However, humans are obsessed with categorizing things. Those that refuse to identify with certain religions and genders are considered different and weird. However, it is also becoming more common for people to let go of self-definitions. Many people simply refuse to fit into a specific category.

While a person cannot let go of their roles in Shakespeare’s “ages of man,” you can let go of the “roles within your roles” and free your mind from the attention-seeking obligations of the ego. Yes, at certain times in your life you may be a victim or a villain, but you do not have to play that role all the time. Tolle suggests that these roles can only be temporary if you are open to finding true happiness.

I want to know what our readers think. Have you played any of these roles- in your life? How did you get past these roles or are you still playing them? Let’s continue the conversation on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.

Shakespeare’s Speech from Poetry Foundation:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Heard It on the Podcast - March 2

 

Did you miss a link we mentioned on the podcast? Here's a quick post we'll do every Wednesday to share any links or information from the podcast. We'll also keep a running post on the "Links from the Podcast" tab so you can refer back to any previous episode. Here's the links for this week:

2-MAR-2022

S2E10: Cups

• Ali Edwards "Just Write": https://aliedwards.com/subscribe/just-write
• Borgbilly/Sonic Biscuit 365 Project: https://soundcloud.com/mark-murray-2
• Eckhart Tolle, "A New Earth": https://amzn.to/3hblVm4
• Creative Audio Tech/Red Door Studios: http://www.creativeaudiotech.com

As an Amazon Affiliate, Modern Musings earns from qualifying purchases.

Resistance is Futile

“Resistance is futile.” Pardon my inner geek as I appropriate this “Borg” catch-phrase from TV’s Star Trek, but I just couldn’t resist. Some could argue that no truer words have ever been spoken. In his book, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle talks about the detrimental effects of resisting change versus yielding to it, and we’ve talked a bit about that on the two-part podcast episode that we wrapped up today. In our discussion, we mentioned Tolle’s belief that there are only two options for coping with change, trauma, grief, and other life-altering events; you can resist, and thus remain stuck in the negativity that comes with it, or you can yield and pass through it, which can actually make you stronger in the long run.

Resistance requires energy. Resistance consumes resources. You can’t keep fighting without exerting tremendous amounts of energy and burning through resources. Think about an army that needs manpower, food, weapons, armor, and the money to buy those things. A successful army needs morale. So, too, does resistance to change…to grief, to trauma, to progress. The more a person fights these changes, the more energy and emotional resources they expend on it, the more angry, exhausted, and negative that person becomes. All that negativity takes its toll (no pun intended). Negativity rebounds as anger, stress, physical ailments, isolation, blame, and what some might call bad luck or karma.

But what does it mean to yield? The New Oxford American Dictionary has several definitions that apply. In the first sense, to yield is to produce or provide a product, generate a (financial) gain, or to deliver a result or gain. This is certainly true of many kinds of change when you look at the bigger picture. What do I have to gain from this? What message does this teach me? What positive outcomes have occurred because of this? In another sense, to yield is to give way to arguments, demands or pressure, to relinquish possession, to give something up, to cease to argue about, or to give something (as in traffic) the right of way. In this form, yielding is the act of going through the trauma or the change and coming out the other side, much in the same sense as Christen described going through the Swamps of Sadness in the Neverending Story without becoming part of the swamp. 

It should be noted that to yield often has a temporary connotation. When we yield to traffic, we give up our right of way until it is safe to proceed. It is not the same as giving up or giving in, which is what happened to Artax when he and Atreyu went through the Swamps of Sadness. When making that distinction, I like to think about quicksand. It is common knowledge that panicked flailing (resistance)  in quicksand can rapidly make the situation much worse, but the answer isn’t to give up either, because then you’ll just sink and suffocate. The answer is to move slowly and deliberately. Toss away anything you can to make yourself lighter. Keep your hands above the sand as much as possible. Reach carefully, for a branch or a helping hand, and pull yourself to safety. By accepting and adapting to the situation, you can move through it and come out the other side. Life is the same way.

Last month, I got a little first-hand experience in yielding. I’ve talked about my love for Christmas and holiday traditions of all kinds. I have some pretty well-defined notions of what that is supposed to look like, and because of the upheaval of the last few years, I’ve taken it upon myself to try and make those holiday experiences as normal as possible, which hasn’t been easy. My Christmas merry-making starts the day after Thanksgiving when my husband sets up the Christmas tree and gets all the decorations out of the shed. In recent years, Christen, her daughter, Reyna, and I spend that Saturday listening to Christmas carols and adorning our family tree. It’s part of the ritual and it helps set the holiday mood.

Unfortunately, this year, we were in the midst of home renovations that were supposed to be completed before Thanksgiving, but actually didn’t even get going full-swing until mid-December. We dutifully cleared out half of our belongings in preparation, and thinking the project would resume any day, we were reluctant to put up the tree or start any decorating for fear we’d have to take it all down. They finally finished the flooring on December 22nd, and they informed us they would not be back until after the 1st of the year to finish the rest (yes, they are still working on it as I write). So here we sat, on December 22 with no tree, no stockings, and I really didn’t even feel much like celebrating Christmas at all. My niece, Ashley, kept telling me she was going to print a photo of a tree and pin it to my wall if I didn’t do something. I wanted my Christmas to look a certain way, and if I couldn’t have it the way I wanted it, well then, I just wasn’t going to have it at all. I was resisting the change, and I was making myself miserable in the process. To make matters worse, my bah-humbug attitude wasn’t just affecting me…it was felt by everyone in the house.

Ashley's cute little tree.

Ashley was the one who had the answer that turned it all around. She wasn’t asking for my tree…she just wanted a tree. And so a tree we gave her. I had a small tree that I usually set up in my kitchen, and I put Ashley in charge of decorating it. I found some fairy lights I had bought for my craft room. One set was broken and didn’t work, so we cut off the battery pack and used the wire-strung bobbles as a garland on the tree. The other set was so long it covered the tree twice. Rather than pull out my fragile ornaments for this wobbly little pine, we used another goodie from my craft room – a pile of pompoms I had been making for a garland. Ashley tied them all over the tree. It was very cute in its own Charlie Brown sort of way.

Creamy pumpkin soup in fine china on the patio.

I don’t tell you this to brag about how cute this sad little tree came out, but rather, to illustrate the point of yielding. In the end, we wound up decorating my back porch with lights, setting up a few folding tables with pretty tablecloths and my fine china to enjoy a fantastic dinner with family and friends. I won’t say it was all smooth sailing; I definitely had a little meltdown when I got frustrated with my husband, Mark, for not doing what I asked. It wasn’t the Christmas I imagined, but it was good. The weather was perfect (we were in the ’80s here), it looked nothing like my traditional Christmas feast, and it just felt right for this time in our lives. 

Stockings hung on the banister instead of their usual place.

The lesson I learned is that resisting the change only made me (and everyone else around me) miserable. When I embraced the change, found a way to work through it, not by insisting on doing it exactly as we’ve always done (resistance), nor by giving up (staying miserable by refusing to yield to the change), but by really embracing the singularity and uniqueness of the situation, we all found a happy place within the change. We found happiness in what is…in “now”. 

Acceptance – yielding to what is – is not a form of defeat. In fact, it is the only way to win. A battle is not won on defensive maneuvers alone. Winning requires acknowledging our circumstances, accepting our situation, and adapting to it. To make the most of what we have, and to keep moving forward…to remember the objective. To not give in or give up, and certainly not to keep struggling to make things happen on our terms. A good general knows this. The Borg know this. 

So the next time you are in an untenable situation, the next time life throws you a curveball, step back, take stock, and ask yourself, “How can I move through this? How can I yield? How can I turn this to my advantage?” Because to fight it, to resist, will only make you (and those around you) miserable. Remember, resistance is futile.

The tree with gifts for scale.

Christmas lights strung between the trees
made this very pretty after dark.