I can’t complain.
Rarely have I heard that statement that I didn’t think immediately to myself, Oh yes, you can. I have heard you do it, innumerable times! How quickly people give themselves nowhere near enough credit when it comes to the ability to complain.
Priests can complain. It’s part of our training, it seems. Seminarians are EPIC complainers. Rather like most people in an academic setting, the stakes are so small that the fighting is fierce. Add to that the life-formation dimension of seminary, and the complaints accrue higher-payload warheads along with terminal guidance. Ordination blunts the impulse or reduces the opportunities, but the finely hewn ability to complain remains.
Soldiers, similarly, are known for their ability to craft and deliver complaints; the skills develop even more highly when the soldiers are in action or on campaign. Do you think this may be a phenomenon common to men in uniform? Perhaps complaining is nurtured by being under someone else’s command, having certain – or all - aspects of one’s day and one’s life be outside one’s own control.
The other circumstance that may contribute to gold-medal-winning complaining chops among seminarians and soldiers is the tempting availability of an audience. Both groups of guys are surrounded by other guys in the same circumstances, enduring the same hardships, and eager to assign responsibility for the same miseries. The complaints are then intended for an unhelpful but sympathetic audience. Sympathy is perhaps better than nothing.
Recently I ran across an old cartoon of three devils behind an office door in hell, with the damned souls visible outside the door glass, suffering in silhouette. The staff devils were guffawing with merriment as they read notes pulled from a conspicuously labeled “suggestion box.” That would be an unhelpful and unsympathetic audience.
Sometimes, we complain to achieve more than sympathy: justice for our righteous cause, redress for some wrong done to us. Whether we contact customer service of some firm, an ombudsman of some enormous organization, or some elected official’s staffer, we hope our complaint find a sympathetic and responsive ear. All too often that hope is disappointed.
Convinced of the justice of our cause and the righteousness of our complaint, we can be moved to take our complaints even higher. Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint. (Psalm 64:1) The Psalmist lets us know that our impulse to complain is hardly a modern phenomenon, and our desire to be heard by the Almighty Redresser of Wrongs is as strong now as ever. We can pronounce judgment on whether the Divine Ear is sympathetic or responsive much more critically than we judge the justice of our cause or the righteousness of our complaint. Wait and see; wait and see.
Complaining brings judgment upon not only the complaint, however, but also the complainer. Herein lies the peril. Perhaps this invitation to scrutiny is overlooked too often, especially when the complainer address his complaint to God. That kind of scrutiny, who can stand?
Prudence and self-preservation dictate that I keep my complaint to myself. The lassitude of summer brings an equanimity unavailable the rest of the year. Despite all the failures of powers and potentates, authorities and agents to live up to my expectations in matters large and small, reticence settles over me like a humid afternoon. How is the summer going, you ask?
I can’t complain.
Monsignor Smith
