I guess I’d be lying if I said that I never complain. Or grumble. Or whine. We all do it. Life gets us down a bit – we have a little grumble; things don’t quite turn out as we expected them to – we moan a bit; people don’t do what we expected them to do – we complain about it.

But maybe we have all become used to dealing with complaints that we have stopped even noticing that there’s a lot of them about! It’s almost as if having a little grumble has become an accepted form of greeting: you say hello and then get on with having a wee moan about life. When you next bump into someone you know and pass the time of day with them in the street, swapping news, making comments about the weather just ask if they’re well. Just wait. Don’t say anything much other than Mmmm, Yes, or Uh-Huh……….just tune in to hear what they have to say. You might find that you hear about a long catalogue of crises and disasters.

Passing the time of day, we talk about our work, or our family or the weather or the washing machine that’s broken down or the cost of new trainers for your teenagers…….. or whatever our lot in life happens to be. It’s such a common, everyday event that we don’t even notice that we’re complaining about ‘it’.  “it” being the mundane, day-to-day little battles for survival when dealing with life’s ‘little problems’.

Most of us, most of the time – thankfully – don’t have to deal directly with the kinds of events that make front page news. I say this not to minimize the impact of terrible catastrophes on the lives of those are devastated by grief, loss or violence but to encourage you think about the uncertain world we live in today. Today’s news is filled with numbers of people infected, tested and dying because of COVID – 19. The virus that has changed everything and brought the world to a standstill.

Let’s all go out for a walk! It will relieve cabin fever and help us to feel better about life, the universe and everything.

l.