If there’s one thing I habitually do more than eating, sleeping or breathing, it’s complaining. To be fair, I don’t think I’m alone in this habit, but I don’t think people always realize when they’re doing it or even why they’re doing it.

To further investigate my own dependence on complaining, I attempted to go the entire week without complaining. Key word being “attempted.” I severely underestimated how integral complaining is in my day-to-day vocabulary. Part of my underestimation stemmed from simply not knowing what classifies as complaining. However, an even bigger contribution seemed to be the fact that it’s just how our generation communicates and relates to each other.

I woke up on day one of this adventure with a headache and no sooner did I get out of bed than I immediately complained to my roommate about it. However, I soon learned after, that complaints of that sort were much easier to be aware of and correct.

Yes, I often find myself complaining about homework, a stressful workload or a major headache, but the complaints that were actually more common in conversations were much more subtle than that, making it hard for me to detect and correct.

For example, about three days into my week I found myself mid-conversation with a group of my close friends, per usual, I was loudly proclaiming some stupid new story of something that happened to me that day that frustrated me. I started to listen to myself talk and began to realize that it was sounding more and more like complaining. I was kind of joking, but it was difficult for me to draw the line between joking around with friends on topics that annoy me and just straight complaining. By the end of the week I was able to catch myself before I began another irrelevant rant.

Another night that tested my restraint was the presidential debate night. This is when I started to question the difference between constructive, thoughtful complaining and unnecessary, trivial complaints. Discussing concerns and criticisms that can be changed with proper action and intellectual conversations shouldn’t count as complaining in the negative sense of the word because I believe word of mouth can directly translate into action. A thoughtful complaint is the beginning of change and without them we wouldn’t grow as a community.

That being said, abhorrently spewing contempt for something in an unproductive manner doesn’t lead to anything positive, therefore making it unnecessary complaining in my eyes. In many cases on debate night I was forced to bite my tongue and in many cases that night I failed.

However, towards the end of my week I started to notice many instances where complaining with a stranger or an acquaintance gave me common ground to relate and start a conversation. For some reason, often with an awkward silence comes a mutual complaint. From complaining about a lot of homework with a partner in class or the crappy weather while waiting for a bus, complaints can sometimes bring us together.

But does it bring people together for the wrong reasons? Why is that we rarely start a conversation with something good that’s happening in our lives or around us? I think it’s a fear of sounding too arrogant or egotistical, but it’s disappointing that we can’t try to relate more to people based off of the positives rather than the negatives. This discovery led me to believe that we’re living in a world where pessimism and distraught is at the forefront of a majority of our conversations. It in turn makes it so easy to relate to because it’s so frequently advertised in the world around us. If we all collectively decided to share the positives rather than the negatives, this trend could be reversed.

The end of my week of theoretically no complaints left me slightly unearthed. I realized just how intrinsic complaining is in our daily lives as well as how difficult is can be to catch ourselves participating in it, in part due to the various forms of it. However, to know the differences is what stood out to be the most important to me. A thoughtful, provocative criticism that can lead to action is a constructive complaint. A complaint that supposedly brings people together based off of pessimistic views only perpetuates that pessimism into other aspects of our lives.

We can’t always catch a complaint when we say them, but to become more aware of when you are and why you are seems to me to be a productive way to add more positivity into your life.

Sam Miner can be reached at mine0034@stthomas.edu