THE SEA COMPLAINS UPON A THOUSAND SHORES
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain. And most fools do.” — Dale Carnegie
Most advice about complaining boils down to: Don’t. Stop.
I found lots of quotes from very smart people counseling strongly against it. Conventional wisdom holds that complaint is the enemy of happiness, that those who gripe make themselves miserable. That they deplete and waste their own time and energy, and suck the life out of others around them. That complaining not only fails to improve conditions, it actually makes things much worse.
I’ve taken such advice to heart my entire life. When I catch myself grumbling and dissatisfied, generally I try to snap out of it as fast as I can. Complaining feels like weakness, like sniveling victimization, and I definitely don’t want to be that guy. I much prefer to think of myself as strong, enthusiastic, and robust. So I do my darnedest to counter gripes with gratitude, to neutralize whines with appreciation, and to bring a solution-oriented approach to all my problems, large and small.
And — okay! That’s not a horrible strategy. To meet this often-difficult world with our chins held high. Hey, I’d rather be a cheerleader or even a pollyanna than a downer or an energy vampire, right? People seem to like me for it, my cheery pluck. So being a cockeyed optimist segues nicely into my people-pleasing instincts — it’s a win-win.
Except when this turns into accepting the unacceptable, being permissive when we need to resist, coasting when conditions truly call for change.
The word “complaint” originally meant lamentation. To complain was to express grief, anguish, or suffering. Gradually, though, through the late Renaissance, it started taking on the more insidious and critical connotations it still carries today — from grief to grievance, from pining to whining, from pain to blame.
I don’t know why or how this happened. But I think the shift is pretty interesting. How the very idea of complaint got saddled with ineffectuality, inaction, and a lack of personal responsibility. To complain became a sign of weakness, something to be avoided and scorned. It was delegitimized. Now, a “legitimate complaint” sounds like an exception because most complaints are viewed as anything but. Complaints are the needling tools of the privileged or entitled or annoying or lazy.
Maya Angelou said, “What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change how you think about it. Don’t complain.”
Eckart Tolle said, “To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”
Far be it from me to disagree with these great thinkers. Absolutely, I get what they’re saying. But I wonder if, perhaps, they’re both working with a paradigm that doesn’t really serve every situation. I mean — sometimes complaint is really appropriate, even necessary. I think we might frame it a little differently.
A beautiful poem by Scottish poet Alexander Smith contains the line, “The sea complains upon a thousand shores.” (Reading that this week is what got me started on this whole idea.)
His poem is about the human soul longing ever to be free, to express. How, though we may strive to be as boundless as the oceaned world, inevitably we reach limits — like the sea meeting a thousand shores. It’s frustrating.
But I like very much his use of the word “complains.” Because, to me, it suggests complaint as an interactive process, complaint as participation. The ocean faces a reckoning at the shore, yes — AND — it is vast and relentless and powerful. Its complaint against the coastline is not merely a whimper, not a mewling martyrdom. Its innumerable points of contact are creative — making ecosystems and landscapes and economies and continents.
So, with all due respect to Angelou and Tolle (along with Mark Twain and Katherine Hepburn and Zig Ziglar and Dale Carnegie and countless others who deride it), I say: maybe complaint isn’t the problem; it could be more a matter of how we hold our complaints and what we do with our complaints. For Pete’s sake, who says that complaining is the opposite of speaking out, the antithesis of taking action?
Perhaps we could re-conceive complaint as the point at which our yearning souls begin to negotiate and collaborate with a stubborn yet malleable world.
For sure, of course, there are very good reasons to avoid sniveling, impotent self-pity, which is what the critics of complaint are usually talking about. Their advice is well-meant and well-taken. But it certainly shouldn’t have to mean “shut up and suck it up,” when we encounter real shittiness and unworkability in in the world.
Honestly, I’ve got plenty of complaints — a thousand shores of them — and many of them are even quite legitimate. But I’m trying to change how I handle them, handle myself with them. My practice is — rather than meeting them with despair — trying to get clear about the situation and address it in a way that both empowers me and makes a difference. Asking:
- What’s my real beef, here?
- Is there something productive to be said or done about it?
- Is this my problem? Which can mean both/either — is this a problem with me, with what I’m doing, and/or is this a problem for me to deal with?
Electronic musician and DJ James Murphy said, “The best way to complain is to make things.”
To meet and participate in Life with the spirit of constant collaboration. To let our souls’ ache press into the world with the force of all the churning seas, unstoppable, co-creative, and mutual.
I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, August 17. With the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew
©2025 Drew Groves
