Many people are never happier than when they get the opportunity to complain.
— Julian Baggini
Complaining is my hobby.
Sure, I could quit my hobby, but only by replacing it with an equally engrossing one.
Woodworking comes to mind.
But then I'd have to invest in a lot of fancy lumber and tools and find a place in the house to build a workshop, whereas I'm already fully equipped to complain.
Unlike woodworking, complaining also has the advantage of being a portable hobby.
I can complain any time, anywhere, about any subject you can imagine.
Despite all the possible subjects, I tend to limit my complaints to a finite set.
You could call me a specialist.
When it comes to complaining, many people have a much wider range than mine.
Their complaints are panoramic.
They will complain about summer days, newborn kittens, gourmet meals, world heritage sites, and virtuoso performances.
When the market goes up, they'll complain that it was down.
When the movie was fabulous, they'll complain that it was too long.
When the line is short, they'll complain that it's moving slowly.
For these people, complaining is less a hobby than an occupation.
We call them pains in the ass.
Complaining as an art form has a spotty reputation among thinkers.
Aristotle called it "wailing" and said it was a disagreeable habit of women, servants, and "soft" men.
Seneca said it was pointless—like trying to evade taxes.
Kant thought complaining was undignified and unworthy of a gentleman. "No true man will importune a friend with his troubles," he said.
Eighteenth-century essayist Joseph Addison thought that complaining signaled a character defect. "It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect," he said.
But complaining has its defenders, too—especially among contemporary thinkers.
"Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be," Julian Baggini has said.
When it's not simple whining, Baggini points out, complaining can take the form of protest, often the basis of important social and political reforms.
Complaining can also relieve common miseries.
As social creatures, according to Kathryn Norlock, we need to complain, if for no other reason than to "make the unchangeable easier for complainers to bear."
This "cathartic" variant of complaining not only provides us a much-needed psychic safety valve, but underpins many of the greatest passages of world literature, as Emily Shortslef has observed.
Through an "array of rhetorical modes and literary forms of complaint," Shortslef says, writers through the centuries have elevated complaining from mere kvetching to tragedy, giving readers the chance to contemplate the "inherent vulnerability of humans to loss and injury."
Just imagine if Job, Hamlet, Ahab, Yossarian, or Portnoy had been told never to complain.
