How does complaint reveal a lack of courage? This could very well resolve our need (or lack thereof) to complain, making us more inherently thankful, therefore happier, and finally more at peace with ourselves!
As a sequel to my earlier article COURAGE, the theory goes like this. Any time we complain we reveal a lack deep within ourselves, and this is manifested emotionally—we become our wounded child momentarily. Scrape away at the layers of the complaint and there is revealed for us something that finds itself clinging to us, or us to it—a dependence has formed. We’ve now revealed a fear, or even worse, a difficult-to-identify-and-resolve anxiety. Pinpointed is a lack of courage in that area of life.
Causes of Complaint
Complaint is caused by lack, which is caused by the wounded self, which creates dependences, which in turn reveals fears (or anxieties) and hence, a lack of courage.
Complaint is merely the symptom or sign of emotional ill health. They do, however, offer important clues on how we can self-identify our emotional lack derived from our wounded past, if we’ll ask why. We must first not want to tolerate the complaint, which is a lie in any event. Complaints never sound good.
Dependences Deep Down
Dependences are unhealthy, yet we all have them. Even an insidious dependence is unhealthy. Well, the insidious dependences are especially unhealthy as they buried deep within the heart and the psyche. Complaints are again merely the outward form of an inner need gone begging.
A common complaint I struggle with surrounds time, and my perceived lack of it, or more to the point, my fear that I will not have the time to do all the things I feel I need (or want) to do. I might be tempted to become flustered in the ordering of things, and even feel my world is chaotic when realistically it isn’t. My real fear is a dread of being caught out, being ill-prepared at a final critical moment, and literally it’s also an anxiety—I occasionally get overwhelmed by it all, even within myself. (Yes, even our internal complaints reveal lack.) Overall, as we all suspect, fear is a lack of faith, and faith is a close cousin of courage.
We must understand that many of our issues based in fear are not just overt fears, but clusters of covert anxieties too—unidentified fear (plural).
Hence—and this is the point—it’s a lack of courage that underpins and generates the complaint.
The only exception to this is when we’re bringing someone to account, like a teenaged child, and they accuse us of being in a bad mood when we’re simply drawing to their attention, in an adult way, matters of their own selfishness and the consequential impacts on others of their actions.
We might be accused of complaining, but this is not a complaint. Complaints are visceral to our own selfish natures, which are in turn deeply rooted in our own missing needs; those things we tend to fret about.
An Accord of Gratitude
Why would I even take the time of analysing this topic if it weren’t for a saliently positive goal? If there is an exact opposite of complaint it’s gratitude. Anyone who’s ever felt really grateful before knows the joy and peace this emotion brings.
And this is the inevitable destiny for the person who addresses the causes of their complaining. It’s not simply about not complaining, but it’s noticing the personal lack within their person, as a means of understanding and then if possible removing the lack. It’s at best healing; at an acceptable worst it’s a kind of self-empathy of understanding.
Courage Doubled
And courage is not only identified as lacking in the form and manifestation of complaint, it is required in being ruthlessly honest with ourselves to bring about understanding and healing.
Courage is the nexus of self-improvement virtue. We’ve only addressed complaint here.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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