Kvetch 22

com·plain

1. To express feelings of pain, dissatisfaction, or resentment.

2. To make a formal accusation or bring a formal charge.

When I was a small boy, I was very moody, even moreso than I am today. I wasn’t vocal about my pain or how I felt. After all, I was just a child, and I thought that every child, it seemed, probably had the same troubles. I was always being told how to feel by others. No matter how miserable I felt, every query as to my well-being was to be answered with a hearty “Baruch haShem!” I was just following orders.

One nondescript afternoon, I was sitting by the window, staring out into nowhere special in particular, when my Tante Golda o’h, noticing something amiss in her quiet, reticent nephew that he could not see in himself, came over to me and said “If you don’t complain, no one will ever know that you’re hurting.” I have never forgotten that lesson, though I admit, I haven’t always been as outspoken as circumstances demanded.

Now my father o’h was not quite as sensitive as his older and more educated sister. When my father used the word ‘kvetch’, it was generally in the context of shutting down any opinion that disagreed with his own views or tastes. Many people still use the “stop complaining’ tactic to shut down dissent by painting those who dissent as nothing more than cry-babies or whiners. It is always easier for those in power to squash dissent than to address the issues head on.

That’s not to say that complaining is always justified or proper in and of itself. Both complaint and response should be evaluated as to their respective merits. It's a two-way street. I have a childhood story that illustrates this clearly.

My father was an electrician. After several break-ins and thefts from his work truck, he decided, rightly so, that the best way to protect his investment was to unload the contents of the truck each night to avoid having them stolen. I don’t know when exactly this decision was made, but I was soon enlisted to help perform this task. I fully resented it at the time. While my friends and cousins were enjoying a few minutes of playtime or getting an early jump on their homework, I was spending up to 45 minutes each day lugging tools or supplies up from and down to our basement from the street. Naturally, I complained.

(A gentile customer of my father’s suggested a novel approach that was eventually adopted. That is another story.)

Many years later, it came to my knowledge that my father had suffered from severe and almost debilitating arthritis in his legs, and every day for him was sheer agony, especially in the winters. Did my father ever complain about his condition? Did he ever explain to me why it was that he was so much in need of my assistance? No. Had I known I may still have not liked my chores, but at least I would have understood why he was so adamant about having me do this chore, and my level of discomfort in doing it would have disappeared, or at least been minimized.

In light of the knowledge of my father’s daily suffering, I still have regrets over my complaints. However, my regret over my father’s inability or unwillingness to complain or share with me his pain is much stronger. I thought my chores were some sort of punishment or maybe worse. His silence caused me to needlessly resent him, where perhaps a short, sympathetic, and open conversation would have alleviated all the aforementioned traumas. I have no doubt, looking back, that bearing pain in silence and then inflicting it upon others, was a long and deep family tradition. If one refuses to share their pain then, as my Tanta Golda would say “No one will ever know that you are hurting”, and consequently would assume the motivations to be either cruel or capricious.

Contrary to the nonsense hyped by authoritarians and tyrants of all kinds, complaining is productive, and it is doing something when those receiving the complaints are willing to evaluate those concerns and respond. Imagine going to your doctor in pain or discomfort, seeking healing, and him telling you to stop complaining! Envision a police detective, counseling a crime victim to stop whining and accept their fate. Picture a parent ignoring the cries of a hurt child. Now imagine the consequences. The cycle of doubt, internalized anger, and petty hatred continues.

The secret is how to complain productively, and that has proven troublesome. In politics, it becomes a game of who to complain to, and how exactly to garner their attention. Currently, we have a government that abides by the rule of “money talks and bullshit walks”, where everything comes down to financing and ‘elect-ability’, which is loosely translated as “has enough clout to generate lots of campaign funding.” It seems that to get your way with government, you have to buy it.

In lieu of sending massive amounts of cash which, by the way, I don’t have, I channel my efforts onto writing editorials, blogging, chatting with others, researching pertinent information, voting, and letting my Congresspersons know where I stand on the issues. I cannot force them to do anything. I can only hope they see the rationale of my claim and accede to its merits. If they refuse to do so, and I assure you they do, I have no recourse but to vote against them in the next election cycle.

Now, I am only one man, and not a brilliant one either, but there are hundreds of thousands who share my ideals to one extent or the other, and the only way we find each other is through complaining out loud so we communicate and join forces. When Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine were distributing leaflets ‘complaining’ about George III, it was that very dissent that rallied others of similar opinion and mind to their cause. Like the revolutionaries of 1775, today’s ‘complainers’ do get organized. I am among those who help that process.

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have a society that sits silently when in pain and then expect that society to grow and produce civilized and enlightened citizens. There is a time to be Stoic, to go through the motions and do what must be done, but there is also a time for outcry, outrage, and vocal dissent when wrongs, perceived or real, are committed by those in power. We cannot be submissively silent and remain free at the same time.

Those in power seek to place the governed in a precarious predicament. If we don’t complain, they won’t think that we think anything is wrong, and if we do, they wish to discourage those complaints by insulting or stigmatizing those who speak out. Basically, they are complaining about our complaining.

Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. A Kvetch-22. No?