Banal Complaining Will Make You Feel Better
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There is a lot to complain about in the world these days, a lot of really big and important things that will have a massive impact on all of our futures.
And yet sometimes it’s easier to rant and rave about why car lights seem to have gotten so much brighter in the past few years (you’re not wrong, lights have gotten brighter and Europes adressed this with adaptive headlights) or the fact that people seem to have forgotten all of their social graces in the dog park.
How dare I complain about that guy who keeps his dog on the leash in the off leash area when democracy is at stake.
But here's the thing – our brains are peculiarly wired for this kind of cognitive dissonance. It's almost as if the bigger our collective problems grow, the more desperately we cling to the minor irritations of daily life. Perhaps it's a coping mechanism, like focusing on a loose thread in your sweater while waiting to hear the results of your biopsy.
We're simultaneously capable of doom-scrolling through news about international conflicts and getting genuinely upset because someone didn't like the Japanese milk bread biscuits we baked for them. It's absurd, yet somehow perfectly human.
The small complaints serve as pressure release valves. When the big issues feel overwhelming – climate change, political upheaval, economic uncertainty, women being harnessed for breeding colonies – we find strange comfort in directing our frustration at the person who didn't refill the office coffee pot or the neighbor who insists on mowing their lawn at 7 AM on Saturdays.
These miniature grievances are manageable, unlike the world's major crises. We can't single-handedly solve global warming, but we can absolutely write a strongly worded email to the delivery service that keeps leaving our packages in the rain. It's not exactly changing the world, but it gives us the illusion of control in a universe that seems increasingly chaotic.
Maybe that's why social media is flooded with people arguing about whether pineapple belongs on pizza while democracy teeters on the brink. These trivial debates offer a vacation from existential dread – a mental spa day where the stakes are comically low and the worst possible outcome is being wrong about the proper way to load a dishwasher.
I posted my own banal complaints on Instagram this week and asked you to share yours. For all of the reasons listed above it was a delightful exercise in collective ranting that made me feel so much better. I’m not saying I want to moan about the little things all the time, or that it is particularly healthy, but every once in awhile this is what we need. Here are some of my favorites that you posted. How many of these can you relate to? And make sure to add your own in the comments. Maybe we will make a master list of commiseration.