Who among us has a "right" to complain?

[quade 3]

I know I don't. Not really.

Is my life what I wanted it to be? Not really.
Is it as bad as it could be? Not really.

I heard a story about a big Hollywood star the other day. He was offered $3 million dollars to fly to another country, do essentially a walk on role of shooting for 4 days and he bitched and moaned that he wanted $4 million for the work; a million for each day. He thought he was irreplaceable and the producer would just roll over and give him the extra money. Of course, he got fired.

Over the weekend a skydiving friend of mine on FB was bitching because he got weathered out and didn't get to go skydiving. The first person to respond to him was a former team mate of mine who became a quad in a skydiving accident.

Yeah, I've got no damn right to bitch about anything.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Fast 0]

Yeah man. It's hard to keep it all in perspective sometimes, but most of the problems that we have are very "first world" problems. Not to mention that in the skydiving world we already have so much more opportunity and awesomeness in our lives compared to a large majority of people.

Sometimes I get caught up in things and have to settle myself down and remember that I shouldn't be taking things so seriously.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

[Darius11 12]

I’ll give an old Persian saying,
“The shoe or the foot”.

The story goes one guy has lost a shoe, and another his foot, yet the anguish and frustration they each feel is the same.

Unfortunately that’s just being human. You can always say it can be worst because it can, but the reality is it can also be better. That’s just life trying to put any system or reasoning to why something is the way it is, is a waste of time. It simply is what it is.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[quade 3]

I'm just amazed by some of the whining I hear from some people on a daily basis.

I'm also going to admit that I also do it occasionally, but FFS not every little incident that befalls a person is publicly bitch-worthy. Occasionally it's a good idea to step back and realize there's probably somebody sitting right next to you who has it much worse off.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[muff528 3]

You know what makes me sick? You know what makes me so mad I want to invent underpants for cattle – just so I can give a rodeo bull a wedgie?

You know what my ol’ lady told me last night? I swear the woman’s been out in the sun too long. She got sun stroke…or just went daft. She tells me she’s got to go shoppin’…to get some new pants to wear around the house.

Do I look like Bill Gates? Did we hit the lott’ry an’ she didn’t tell me?

Number one…house pants are never bought. They are demoted. Your house pants are your runnin’ to town pants…after they get too many holes in’em. Am I right? You don’t sit around the house in new pants! That’s a waste a’ new pants.

See – your regular, right-thinkin’ Americans got what I call a pants ‘system’. For you smart people out there…it’s like a hierarchy of pants. For example – you go to the Walmart an’ buy the nicest pair a pants you can find. I mean – you’re shellin’ out ten-fifteen bucks – an’ getting’ like the Cadillac a’ pants. Shiny an’ new…tight seams…pockets with bottoms in’em…zipper works…. You can go anywhere in them pants. You could go to the White House in them pants. Those are some nice pants.

Then you start gettin’ a weak spot in the crotch…little holes at the corners a’ the back pockets…maybe a belt loop or two breaks. They get demoted to runnin’ errands pants. You can wear’em to like the convenience store to get beer an’ smokes…or to run through the McDonalds. You can cut grass in’em. But you can’t get married in’em no more an’ your ol’ lady won’t let you wear’em to church.

Then that hole in your crotch opens up…every time you spread your legs, you feel the breeze. Set down – your whole knee is stickin’ out…an’ the zipper only goes halfways up. Every time you put your keys in your pocket – you lose’em in the driveway. They get demoted…to house pants. Which basically you can wear until you bend over an’ split’em wide open like a hog carcass at an Oscar Myer plant. Even your family don’t want to see that.

Wake up, America. Then when them pants are done – you don’t get new house pants. You get new NICE pants…an’ all your pants shift down one. It’s a system, people. I’m Earl Pitts, American. Pitts Off. [url "http://www.earlpitts.us/weekly-rant/underwear-for-cattle/"]~Earl Pitts, American[url]

[swisschris62 0]

They say that if we took all of our problems and tossed them into a big heap in the middle of a field we would all run to the pile to get our own problems back out of the heap.

Everyone's got them.

[shropshire 0]

Some days you're the Pigeon
and some days you're the Statute.

You only come this way once so the make the most if it.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[chuteless 1]

I think you are correct Quade. People have it too good, and they really don't appreciate that fact.

I can see constructive criticism as a healthy thing, but not the cry baby act when they already have it so much better than their parents/ancestors.

[ryoder 1,388]

This is about someone having an unsolicited chip dipped in their chili, isn't it?

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[Arvoitus 1]

The way I've explained to myself is that a lot of (most?) people can't deal with life without having problems so they create BS problems out of nowhere. When I realize myself doing it, I rationalize myself out of the thinking even though it might be more tempting to bitch about nothing really.

Even at the moment, I found out that the project I've been working my whole time at the company I work for, is going to be transferred to China and they're probably going to layoff something like one third of the workforce at our site, which would give a perfect opportunity to to whine. However I see it as an opportunity to possibly make big move in my life i.e. move to another country with better sky/BASE-jumping opportunities.

Your rights end where my feelings begin.

[quade 3]

ryoder

This is about someone having an unsolicited chip dipped in their chili, isn't it?

Nope. Nothing to do with anyone on this web site specifically. Everything to do with the internet in general.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[CanuckInUSA 0]

I got screwed at the start of one of my Karting races yesterday. I am driving a 2-stroke Rotax DD2 Kart which is more powerful than the standard Rotax Max Karts and there are only two of us locally who run this superior yet not all that popular machine. Because of this unfair advantage I am not allowed to compete in the Rotax Max Senior class and instead must compete in the Shifter class which has Karts even more powerful than mine, except that my Kart is easier to drive than the 6 speed Shifter Karts. Anyway all the Shifter guys want to do standing starts, but I can't do the standing starts in a DD2 because the DD2 is too slow off the line. Instead we do a hybrid start where I come rolling in behind all the Shifters standing still and when the race start marshal feels I am close enough he throws the green flag. Unfortunately in yesterdays final I was a good 100 meters away from the starting grid when the others were given the green flag to go. Throw me a bone will you. It is bad enough that I always have to start in last place, but at least let me get closer before you start the race.

But with that said, I have no right to complain. At least I am allowed to race. If I had to race only with those who have the same Kart as me, it would be a very lonely where I win every race and yet still come in last place because the other local DD2 racer doesn't like to race all that much. He just likes showing up at practices.

Besides, the natural pecking order said I should finish in 7th place against the 11 guys who were entered in the race and I actually took 5th place over all. I passed who I was supposed to pass, which was the four Karts I passed in both races (the start of the first race went perfectly). Anyway there were three visiting drivers from another club and I have home field advantage over them practicing and racing on my home track all the time and the other guy I passed is capable of lapping slightly faster than me, but he is not consistent, he makes way more mistakes than I do and catching and passing him on his mistakes was inevitable. No the pecking order says I should have finished 7th, but I took 5th because one of the front runners got into an accident and had to retire while another one of the front runners had to retire due to mechanical failures. The only difference in the race results was that the gap between myself in 5th place and the 4th place finisher was larger than it should have been. No I have nothing to complain about. I was actually kind of fun to hunt down and pass the four guys I was supposed to pass even if I was screwed starting further back than I should have.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[oldwomanc6 38]

Everyone has a right to bitch, but everyone also has a right to not pay the bitcher any mind.

I zoned out about the third sentence!

lisa
WSCR 594
FB 1023
CBDB 9

[Nataly 38]

oldwomanc6

I zoned out about the third sentence!

Well, we're human... Some of my best memories are of when I was broke, broke, broke, and some of my darkest moments have happened when everything was actually going really well. People can be a lot more emotional than rational sometimes...

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[riddler 0]

This is why Americans should travel. Not to Hawaii or Disneyland - travel to the places they tell you not to go, because they're "too dangerous". Very few times I have gone to other countries and felt any sense of being threatened. I live next to low income, drug-ridden apartments, and have come close to being killed more times living in my own house than going to another country.

Point is, I've been to Indonesia and seen entire families living in piles of garbage. Not just a few people, like an old man (of maybe 28 years, who looked 50), his ragged wife, and their children. Babies, super skinny dogs. They built shanties out of the garbage discarded by the mini-mall, behind which they lived. 30 years is the average male life expectancy, and wars between islands claim more people than they can estimate.

I've been to the Mennonite villages of Belize, where the young boys' swim and dive into crocodile-infested rivers, and the parents raise kids only to work the farms. Many of them are missing limbs from the farm machinery.

I've been to Fiji, where the villagers ask people to bring boxes of band-aids, because the kids are all walking around with maggot-infested scrapes and wounds from living on a harsh island.

My dad is a vet and I would sometimes visit him in the psych ward of the VA hospital, where the men from overseas wars, who were too functionally incompetent to live in the real world, would tell horror stories of things they did to the people in SE Asia, and what those people did to them. Here, they get treatment, and a place to stay. Over there, their war veterans that can't live in the real world just curl up and die with no one to take care of them.

You get back to your air-conditioned, Internet-fed, kitchen-appliance, manicured lawn house in the States, looking forward to your next jump out of an airplane, just for entertainment, and realize that life here isn't so bad.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[shropshire 0]

Nice post...... most of us will never understand and most couldn't care less

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[NorrinRadd 0]

Life is way better when you focus on the good shit, anyways. You focus on the things you don't like, and you eventually become miserable about everything. You focus on what you like, and life becomes amazing.
And we do have it good.

Why drive myself crazy trying to be normal, when I am already at crazy?

[NWFlyer 2]

I've blocked/hidden/unfollowed people on social media if the majority of their posting is whining and/or drama about their life. Or if they use the hashtag #FML in anything less than a completely ironic fashion. I also have friends who have dealt with some real and serious issues whose lives are an inspiration to me and can often help snap me out of any silly feeling-sorry-for-myself moods I do slip into. They're the ones I set to "show me everything" because I want to hear what's up in their lives and how they're facing their challenges.

Sure, we all need to bitch from time to time, and we've all (myself included) had a meltdown over a situation that, in retrospect, really wasn't that big a deal, but we melted down anyway because we were exhausted or hungry or frustrated or angry.

But really, for the overwhelming majority of us, it shouldn't take much at all to put our problems in perspective, and the older I get, the more important it is to me to do that. I'll joke about my "first world problems" but that also shows that I totally recognize their pettiness.

I spend a lot more time on social media (and elsewhere) celebrating the good things in my life. Not because my life is perfect, but generally the problems aren't worth complaining about for very long. And if I do complain, I at least try to make it as funny as possible.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[raff 4]

quade

I'm just amazed by some of the whining I hear from some people on a daily basis.

.

Skydivers, in general, remind me of a bunch of folks in the Garden of Eden arguing over the fruit.

If you leave the plane without a parachute, you will be fine for the rest of your life.

[Trafficdiver 8]

I think complaining about an intrusive government sending drones to spy on me with my tax money, while using the IRS to squash groups that may inhibit its power is a fine reason to complain.

Bitching about having to tip a waiter is just that...bitching.

[piisfish 135]

Darius11

I’ll give an old Persian saying,
.

Shah, is that you ?

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[lawrocket 3]

quade

[B]I'm also going to admit that I also do it occasionally

Like starting a thread bitching about people bitching? Are you being ironic or sarcastic?

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[quade 3]

lawrocket

***
[B]I'm also going to admit that I also do it occasionally

Like starting a thread bitching about people bitching? Are you being ironic or sarcastic?

It's called honesty and full disclosure. I can see how that might be a foreign concept to some.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[lawrocket 3]

It's worse than you think...

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[divertech 0]

I am a white man living in Africa, you lot dont really have a whole lot to complain about. Its quite amusing to see what Americans can find to bitch about.