I WAS ONLY 10 minutes into what was going to be a much longer rant about somebody I’m prone to occasional rants about when my mother brought up the bracelets. She said she’d read an article about them by Claire O’Connell in our excellent Health supplement. “What bracelets?” I asked, most irritated on account of having been stopped mid-rant.
It was a particularly eloquent session. I only employed expletives on two occasions and I more than proved my point, which was that she who shall not be named WAS being a complete pain in the neck and ipso facto I bore NO responsibility at all for the victimised situation in which I found myself. Oh, I love being right. The air is so much better up here on the high moral ground.
“You know, those purple complaining bracelets,” my mother persevered for no good reason but I am a sucker for a good gimmick so I let her continue.
Apparently six years ago an American minister bought a load of purple bracelets for a practical lesson encouraging his flock to practise gratitude. Taking his line from some studies which suggest that it takes 21 days to form a new habit, the idea was that his congregation should wear the bracelets and move them to the other arm if they caught themselves complaining or gossiping or criticising. If they wore their bracelet on the same arm for 21 days they would be well on the way to forming more positive habits and becoming virtually Complaint Free.
There’s a few handy statistics about complaining on the Complaint Free World website. Apparently we complain about 15 to 30 times each day, double that if you are Esther from Fair City or the average caller to Liveline.
I have a relative who if she put on that bracelet wouldn’t be able do anything because her entire day would be spent swapping the bracelet from one arm to the other arm. She complains, therefore she is.
In theory I should be behind this whole thing because the Complaint Free World movement was inspired by one of my heroes, the American writer Maya Angelou, who once famously said: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”
She was recently awarded the six-millionth Complaint Free World bracelet by the complaint-free crowd.
Another writer I admire, Caitlin Moran, often says in interviews that one of her core beliefs is that, if you’re complaining about something for more than three minutes, “two minutes ago you should have done something about it”. Ah yes, Caitlin and Maya, but the fact remains that moaning is just so much easier than action.
Honestly, I’m a bit dubious about a completely Complaint Free World. It would far be too quiet for a start. Most of the talk-radio schedules are full of people basically complaining about stuff, from Morning Ireland to the Late Debate. If people didn’t complain poor Joe Duffy and Emily O’Reilly would be unemployed. The internet would be empty and there’d be no Irish Times letters page. If people stopped complaining the constituency clinics of our politicians would be empty and we would have nothing to say in elevators or at bus stops. I don’t think I’m the only one who uses a weather complaint along the lines of “Jaysus, would you look at that day” to break the ice during those sometimes uncomfortable seconds between the ground and fourth floor.
My main problem with a Complaint Free World is that without complaints how does anything change for the better? The Suffragettes wouldn’t have got very far in terms of securing the vote for women if they’d kept their mouths shut. And without complaints we wouldn’t have got Wispas back on the shelves. Case closed.
The Complaint Free World website has an answer for everything, though. Their trump card is Martin Luther King jnr. “He didn’t stand before thousands in Washington DC and shout, ‘Isn’t it awful how we’re being treated?’ No. He shared his dream of a day when all children of all races would play and live together in peace and harmony.” The complaint-free types suggest that to affect change we paint a vivid picture of the problem already solved and share this with as many people as we can.
By their logic, instead of complaining to my mother about a woman who has been annoying me for years I should visualize and verbalise a world where she realises she needs to apologise for certain things in order to fix the situation. I’m not saying the positive picture that I painted in my head was vivid, it was more of a wishy-washy watercolour, but shortly afterwards a certain rapprochement was reached between myself and this person and suddenly I had reason to celebrate rather than complain.
Maya Angelou also said: “Don’t whine. First it does nothing to the reason for your complaint. More importantly it lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighbourhood.”
Here’s to not being a victim and complaining less. To that end my mother says the bracelet is in the post.
In other news . . .one of Dublin's lesser known gems The Hapenny Flea Market is worth checking out today for the vintage clothes, covetable jewellery and homemade treats. The Grand Social, Liffey Street, Dublin. From noon, tel: 01-874 0076