I hate whiners...
...which makes me highly unpopular in certain circles.
And I hate whiners because they are not doers, but cry-babies who need lots of attention, dedication and time, but give you nothing (apart from exhaustion). They usually cannot be relied on and only know you when they need you. I dislike whiners because instead of taking up a challenge, instead of trying to do something against all odds, instead of trying to do something, even if they're bound to fail (doing that), they sit comforably on their backsides and plunge into long and tedious conversations where they try to explain as fully as possible why something isn't possible.
From the life I've seen so far I can very assuredly say: you don't fail until you give up. Whiners give up the same moment a task is bestowed upon them. Whiners would (or appear so) like to do something, but instead of plucking up their courage, they give up on level zero, perhaps because it would too greatly inconvenience them to actually do what they claim to want to do. Or maybe they just don't believe in themselves.
Surely one knows a person who's been claiming half her/his life (s)he wanted to drop weight, but they never do anything. When they promise to exercise, they start their best couch- potato- imitation-mode (complete with a TV remote and a bag of crisps), when they shouldn't be eating chocolates they whine about being unable to give up chocolate etc. Their range of excuses and blindness (regarding their own actions) never ceases to amaze.
On top of such contradictory behaviour which has great pottential to unnerve a rational, responsible person, they often demand your praise and when you're not most keen to approve, they quickly either tell you you're not being kind and understanding with relation to their case or tell you off for being a bad, bad girl. If, by chance, they can hurt a member of your family/your intelligence/your achievements in the same go, they'll probably take their chances. (I wonder what the outcome was if the same dogged determination one employs in seeking revenge was applied to achieving one of their "goals"...)
In my book, life has never been easy. And even it if could be, I tried to get the most out of a situation. If I didn't believe this, I would never get up at 3 a.m. (at age 15 to study), would never choose medicine (as opposed to languages, which come almost naturally to me), would never attend ballet classes or start jogging on a regular basis, read so many books and tried to see as much of the world as I could. I wouldn't even keep a blog. For me, the winners in life are the ones who keep going, even if they're making small steps, even if they sometimes fail. People who are unable to persevere through the dull, the painful and the difficult never really see the beautiful.
Life hasn't been as easy as it could be for me. (Very, very cliche of me to point it out, but there you go.) I'm still fairly young but already I had to deal with four major disappointments - those of the sort that take a year and more to deal with. But I'm not crumbling, and at most times I'm not complaining. I grit my teeth, bring out my best and do it. True, there are moments when all you want to do is wallow in self-pity, but what really defines you as a person is that a strong, confident person will take a minute, then stand up and be ready to shoulder her burden, a whiner will just sit a bit longer to think what the most plausible excuse would be. The saddest part of the story is that whiners slowly begin to believe they're right. And when you try to point out that the circumstances are not so dire, that only a little bit more could be done, you get tagged - either you're the loser who has no personal life or you're a workaholic or control-freak of other sorts.
In any case - yes, let's finally establish this point: I like strong, confident people. I have great understanding for people whose life took an unpleasant turn and they'd like to change it. However, I have absolutely no compassion or understanding for people who decide not to do anything about their situation and wait for the situation to improve by itself. In the meantime they spend many an hour complaining how nobody understands them and how difficult it is for them.
I'm not devoid of all feeling, either. If I were, I wouldn't be helping in a hospice, I wouldn't decide to be a doctor, most probably a child psychiatrist. I wouldn't try to be there for people, to offer advice and support. I wouldn't be able to offer my condolences, my eyes wouldn't wet when listening to a personal story. But I refuse to accept people who try to hide from reality and they pretend it doesn't exist.
Fullstop. The end of venting.
DISCLAIMER: the going-ons over at Gaby's blog have nothing to do with the content of this article. Her post only served as a motivation to let out steam regarding my real-life experiences with a type of people I call whiners. I don't know Gaby in person and would never dare make such conclusions as are presented here. These, however are real experinces with people I've known a long time.
Labels: random ramblings
10 Comments:
Brrrr. Shudder, shudder, shudder.
Let me put in a note of dissent before all the strong, confident people flood the comments with their me-toos. My opinions are almost 100% diametrally opposite. I hate reality, I hate effort, I hate inconvenience, I hate strong people, and I hate winners. But I absolutely love whining. I suppose I could get fond of whiners too, but unfortunately I don't know any. I seem to be surrounded by can-do people, which is absolutely terrible.
Me too ;)
I kinda agree with both of you. I'm a terrible whiner myself, though I usually don't whine to others, I only wallow in self pity inside myself.
I don't hate whiners. Not all of them. I hate people who whine about some virtual problems just to make others feel sorry about them. (It took me almost half a year to see through some people like that, but now I know better. Complaining about the same (non-existing) problem for over a year! Come on... But it did me good, made me think about things I complain about.)
I do feel sorry for/with people who have "real" problems and feel down, because I know how does that feel and how hard is it (for some of us, anyway) to see a way out of our problems. I'm not nearly tough and strong enough to face a problem and fight to solve it. Somehow I need to wallow for some time. Then I get over the self-pitying phase and the solution is here.
I guess this whining is a kind of a collective sport. I whine, you feel sorry for me and you comfort me. You whine, I feel sorry for you and comfort you. And what do you know, it helps sometimes.
Thumbs up.
As a Ph.D. in hypochondria I am pretty much as much a whinner as one can get. But to assure you, for my part whining is just a very clever strategy of not caring. There is something very comforting in other accepting your constant whining about your problems with good humor or irony, or even with anger or frustration. If Gaby is a true whiner (a category that I am willing to subsume myself under), then she is actually glad to hear you disapproving with her whining. A true whiner in fact intentionally whins to the point of being ridiculous and ridiculoued because to him nothing is more comfortable than hearing laugher aimed at his problems. That is exactly why a true whiner uses hyperbolic strategies of presenting his much-feared problems.
To illustrate my point: during a flight from Greece I felt a rather mild pain in my chest and my first thought was (I did not accept it without self-irony) that a krvni strdek (don't know the english word) had formed in my lungs, since everybody was talking about this dangerous aspect of flying at that time. With laughter I suggested an idea to a classmate, already an acclaimed connaisseur in chemistry and medicine, expecting him to reflect my laughter back, only to find blunt and worried response: "yes, there is a chance, you know, these things tend to happen..." This is were the panic began, and this is the response a genuine whinner dreads of: to be taken seriously.
Inspiring post. Do you like Rugelj?
It reminded me of his editorials in Avto focus, but it's better, because it lacked "I am so expectionaly good"-like bragging.
Bo, Marko - thanks. And no, as Bo can testify, I don't like Rugelj all that much. Kudos to him for reminding Slovenians time and time again about the consequences (and prevalence) of alcoholism, but in many respects my views differ from his. I, for one, think that homosexuals aren't (and shouldn't be) class 2 citizens.
ill-advised - and yet, despite our differences we do manage to get on quite well - and we keep reading each other's blogs. :) Sorry for bringing it up, but there must be a more decided side to you as well - if not, how on Earth would you manage to lose as much weight in such short time, eating so little and even taking up exercise?! :)
Lilit - exactly! When you get over the self-pitying, a solution quickly appears. It's not that I'm 100% prone to self-pity; when something inconvenient, against my wishes happens, I'll first be angry and they think whay-me-all-the-time, but in a couple of minutes, I'll realize that the number of minutes spent fussing about the matter is the number of minutes longer it will take me to get out of the situation. Also, you bring up another valid point. When I know people have serious problems in their life and show at least some inclination to solving them, I usually try to help them. Often just being there for someone, listening to them, offering a piece of advice is enough to make a big change in someone's mood. And when you get over the depression, even a problematic life seems more manageable. And where there's hope, there's joy of living.
Aljoša - that's a lesson learned. Don't make up medical symptoms when in conversation with a doctor. ;) I know your "type" of whiners, too. Some people just talk and whine about something for so long it suddenly seems more manageable a task. A good motivational "you can do it" can put to rest such whining.
Well, at least the whole matter with Gaby upped my stats. Now her blog is the single biggest referring source (30%!!!) and the post to which she linked the second most visited post on the blog, almost beating the main page. The number of visitors in the last two days doubled and looks like some of them are coming back! :)
And this certainly goes to prove that there's something good in everything. Even in blaiming someone else for your problems.
But then you also don't know Rugelj all that much.
Any-how, I prefer "let's find something good in anything" to whining, and when I feel that whining is geeting on me, I take some rest, I go to bed. Kudos to you. (Kudos, a new word for me, great.)
Sorry for bringing it up, but there must be a more decided side to you as well - if not, how on Earth would you manage to lose as much weight in such short time, eating so little and even taking up exercise?! :)
Don't underestimate the power of self-loathing [a trait which goes excellent with self-pity -- two great tastes that taste great together] :) Besides, yes, I may have managed to lose weight, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have been delighted to whine about it if I had found anyone interested in listening to that :) And anyway, the crucial thing about my opinions on this subject is that in my opinion it shouldn't be necessary for anyone to go through starvation and exercise in order to lose weight. This sort of things simply shouldn't be expected of anyone. That's the important difference here -- people like you think it's OK if a person is required to make an effort in order to achieve something, whereas I consider that to be unacceptable; I think it makes our lives less worth living rather than more. I may still make an effort if I consider it necessary or find some other reason to do it, but I don't consider this necessity of effort to be OK. For example, in the case of dieting in particular, I don't doubt that some combination of governmental regulation and pharmaceutical research should be able to bring weight loss within easy and effortless reach of everyone who wants it, and so expecting that fat people will take upon themselves the trouble to lose weight is an unwelcome distraction from this goal.
Maybe I should take up whining on my blog -- that might broaden my audience a bit :))) Actually at the moment I'm working on an exceedingly long whine about my inability to understand modernism, which is of course going to be thinly disguised as yet another book review :))
Well, at least the whole matter with Gaby upped my stats.
This could be the beginning of a wonderful trolling career :))) Between that and the nude photos, you'll be the queen of the Slovenian blogosphere in no time :))
Sorry, ill-advised! It does seem to be you all the time, doesn't it? - the person who writes the most insightful, long comments always has to wait so long for a reply. I promise this isn't anything personal; I like to take time to fully answer your comment and unfortunately it took another long while this time.
Most overweight people share your belief - that one shouldn't strain his/herself in order to lose weight and you believe me when I say that pharmaceutical companies are doing their best to find the magical pill for weight loss. Now, since we're not quite at that stage yet, there's only the magical pill of doing it the oldfashioned way, much like you did.
Now - what would life be like if you didn't have to work for anything, if everything you wanted just happened to you? What would keep you going, what could still make life interesting in two or three decades? I'm not trying to undermine your theory, because surely for the first month it would be a blast! - but later on, I think you'd get too bored. Often, when life is tough one realizes how happy (s)he was before - even if it's too late now. But in the long run, the dry periods are the ones which make the happy hours happier (in my view). If you could do things easily, do you think there would still be a feeling of satisfation upon completing a task?
You say you still make an effort if you consider it necessary - why did you consider it necessary to lose weight? Many people live blissfully unaware (or pretend to do so) of the dangers of smoking/being obese/alcoholism etc.
It is interesting - the amount of things one can "sell" by labeling them as a book review. :)
Believe it or not - for a fleeting second I did mean to convert this to "Daily Load of Crap Posted on Other Blogs" - I could live happily ever after by choosing a different victim every day and then making sure they knew I posted intentionally nasty things about them. In no time this would be the most read blog in Slovenia - beating that Manske guy has forever been my dream - and I could finally install AdSense, make loads of money and with the help of comment moderation, I wouldn't even need to deal with the "I'm so positive, let's all be just positive, it will end all wars and the world will be a beautiful place once again, the flowers will grow and all children will be happy" instead I could just be who I really am - the bitchy, self-sufficient ice-queen who wouldn't give half a pence for what others think of her. Maybe I'd earn a lot and could finally start living on my own. And yeah, I've almost arranged for a session with a photographer, only now I have a rash on my back and such nude photos wouldn't be as appealing... but wait a minute - what if I posted really gross photos? That could really increase traffic around here. (But then, the fleeting moment passed and everything is still as it was.)
Bo - you're right, I haven't read Rugelj's books yet - I might some day, but some of my views differ from his so strongly that I doubt I could ever accept his viewpoint. Which only goes to prove how stubborn I am.
P.S. An old debt as well - krvni strdek = blood clot/thrombus.
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