Some people are chronic complainers. They self-righteously justify their negativity, irritability and disagreeability, “Can’t you see how many things have gone wrong in my life? Complaining is my birthright?” 

However, complaining is no one’s birthright. Why not? Because suffering is universal, justifiable and bearable. 

  1. Universal: If we could know the full life-story of even an ordinary person, we would see many heartbreaks. Undoubtedly, some people suffer much more than others. Still, suffering can’t be objectively quantified with a suffering meter, wherein a reading above a threshold gives the sufferer the right to complain. 
  2. Justifiable: No suffering is ultimately unfair. What we reap now is what we have sown earlier, even if the action-reaction correlation is often unclear to us. 
  3. Bearable: We have the capacity to endure suffering. Animals often suffer terribly, sometimes far worse than humans. Yet they bear their lot without becoming chronic complainers. Nature makes us capable of resilience, but our minds make us weak and whiny. The Bhagavad-gita (18.35) indicates that chronic negativity characterizes a mind steeped in ignorance.  

Moreover, complaining has made no one’s birth right. Why not? Because complaining simply dissipates our emotional energy in unproductive or counterproductive resentment. Of course, if some specific thing is wrong and is fixable, reporting it can help in correcting it. But such constructive specific complaining is far different from chronic generic complaining about the world’s or life’s unfairness. 

Gita wisdom explains that we are at our core souls, who belong to an arena of happiness in the eternal spiritual realm. In the Gita’s light, what is our birthright? Attaining spiritual level of consciousness, not complaining about our present material level of consciousness where we always remain suffering-prone. What will make our birth right? Stoically tolerating suffering by cultivating spiritual consciousness and eventually transcending suffering by absorption in the all-attractive supreme spiritual reality, Krishna. 

 

Think it over:

  • Why is complaining no one’s birthright?
  • Why has complaining made no one’s birth right?
  • What is our birthright? How can we make our birth right?

 

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18.35 And that determination which cannot go beyond dreaming, fearfulness, lamentation, moroseness and illusion – such unintelligent determination, O son of Pṛthā, is in the mode of darkness.

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