"I like to cook once in a while, but not every day," confessed Ed, my neighbor next door. Ed knows I have been batching it while my wife is travelling overseas. Ed lives by the rule that if his wife is away he eats out every meal except for an occasional home-cooked barbeque.
"I'm so tired of my own cooking I'm desperate enough to eat one of your half-cooked steaks," I told Ed. "It is so bad the cat hides when she hears me in the kitchen. When my wife is home the cat begs for some of what we are eating. Since I have been cooking she runs to the basement afraid I might offer her something to eat. My cooking is so bad the cat would call the Humane Society if she could talk to say my cooking is cruelty," I elaborated.
"Enough about your cooking. I'm not asking you to eat with us, no matter how you carry on. Stop belly aching and go to a restaurant like I do if my wife is away," said Ed without a single trace of sympathy.
"If I die from eating my own cooking you won't even come to my funeral," I responded.
"You're right, not to the funeral, but I will be for there for the funeral lunch," answered Ed.
In Psalm 69 it says, "I looked for sympathy, but there was none." When others have no pity or compassion for us, they may feel we are capable of fixing what we are complaining about. They feel there are some obvious things we could do to solve our problem. They may feel we are making a big whine out of nothing really important. Do complainers just want to vent their dissatisfaction rather than change what they are griping and grumbling about?
I must admit I find it easier to complain than to change. No matter how tired I am of my own cooking I don't want to eat at a restaurant by myself. I'd rather whine than dine out alone.
Ed has said to me, "If you don't like eating alone in a restaurant get takeout food. Then you can eat it at home and you'll not be eating your own cooking." Others can always see solutions to our gripes, but we may not want solutions. We just keep complaining even when it doesn't really give us genuine satisfaction or gain us the sympathy of others. There are often reasons for us to change and other reasons why we don't want to change.
Reinhold Niebuhr caught our struggle with and our resistance to change in his beautiful prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I know I don't have to eat my own cooking, but do I have the courage to eat at a restaurant alone? I suppose I could invite Ed to a dinner out, but would it be worth it listening to him complain unless I'm paying for it? I'm not sure I want to buy Ed dinner. I think it is easier to eat my own cooking which I'm sick of.
