‘Don’t take yourself as important…’

My try at a complaint free month

I am a champion when it comes to complaining. About a week ago it hit me in the face: I couldn’t even tell about my weekend anymore, without ending in a very very long rant about all the stuff that’s going on and going wrong in my life. Whether it be my job, my boss, my parents, my partner, my friends, my bus, my shoes, my books, my (lack of) free time, my food or just my own mood — I couldn’t speak one sentence, without complaining.
It made me feel terrible — and in the end, I was complaining about the fact that I was complaining all the time.

After I realized what I did to myself, I really wanted to change it — though nothing worked. I tried questioning everything (’know thyself’) instead of complaining, but it just didn’t come natural enough to hold on. I know it works for some people, but it didn’t work for me.
I tried to see the good side of everything: I should be happy to have a job, when lots of my friends are still looking for one. I should be happy to have someone to share my life with, since one of my friends is going through a terrible break-up. But the thing is: I wasn’t happy.

Since I really wasn’t feeling at ease with my own behavior, I just wanted some time off. I brewed a pot of tea and took a book from the shelve.

‘Don’t take yourself so seriously,’ you used to say when somebody complained.
— Night train to Lisbon (Pascal Mercier)

I was reading Mercier’s novel about the classical languages teacher who suddenly leaves his classroom to go and find a Portuguese woman he only met a couple of moments earlier. He comes across a Portuguese book and starts reading. It’s the memoirs of Amadeu de Prado, who was told by his father not to take himself so seriously.

Why wasn’t my apprehension about the gloomy schoolrooms and the joyless cramming to be taken seriously? Why shouldn’t I take it seriously that Maria João treated me like air, when I could think of hardly anything else? Why were your pains and the judiciousness they had bestowed on your the measure of all things?

In the German version of the book, it reads ‘Nimm dich nicht so wichtig’ — ‘wichtig’ meaning ‘important’ or ‘significant’. So that’s what I’m going to do. Instead of comparing myself to people who got it worse — which wasn’t very helpful for me — I try to see things more in retrospect for myself. Does it really matter if there’s a day at which I’m not as happy? Does it really matter if there’s a dinner made for me that I don’t particularly like?

It’s not about day to day life, because day to day life sometimes simply sucks. No matter what job we have, no matter which relationship we are in: life has its ups and its downs. And of course: if you really do feel bad about something, change it. But be realistic and try to see it in perspective.

‘Considered from the standpoint of eternity,’ you sometimes added, ‘that does lose significance.’

— Night train to Lisbon (Pascal Mercier)