Chuck Kuepfer, Spin Cycle

There are many good reasons to complain about life and the mind-numbing irregularities that go part and parcel with the human experience.

Heck, we could all rattling off a long list of grievances, from the weather and job situations, to family turmoil, misbehaved kids and precious little vacation time.

We do find ourselves from time to time on the short end of the stick, seemingly swimming upstream and somehow feeling like we’ve been wronged, and that the world owes us — yet again.

But it could always be worse.

Somewhere someone undoubtedly has an even better reason to complain, which is the point preachers try to make when talking about Job and the trials he faced, much worse than anything we’ll ever have to deal with.

And it’s not so much that complaining isn’t warranted sometimes but what it does to us that should snap us back to reality when everything isn’t coming up roses.

For that, a dose of optimism is a good thing, not because we can blindly pretend that bad things don’t happen or that the gap between how life is and how life should be is often Grand Canyon-esque.

No, we need the tonic of a positive attitude to chase the dark clouds of life’s inconsistencies away.

We need the above ground reminder that although things aren’t ideal, there are still reasons to be thankful.

Sure every silver lining may have a cloud, but dwelling on everything that’s wrong with even the good things we enjoy is no way to live.

That point is always made crystal clear whenever you happen across somebody who has drunk from that bitter well and allowed it to drown out even the faintest ray of light in the midst personal ruin.

There are those who wallow in the muck and mire of all that is wrong in their lives and let everyone around them know just how bad they’ve got it.

You’d best avoid them like the plague.

Complainers have a way of draining even the simplest of pleasure out of life.

Their bitterness is a poison which seeps into everything they do, a poison that is not only toxic but also lethal.

And maybe that’s why we need to be constantly reminded to count our blessings, even when the cards we’ve been dealt have the deck stacked against us.

You don’t have to look very far to find injustice in a world rife with imperfection, and against such things we should be rightly agitated.

But our agitation should be directed toward doing something about the awful truth that life is unfair and that wealth, health and opportunity are unequally distributed.

And it’s painfully obvious that, even in the midst of our own deficiencies, it’s much easier to complain than it is to doing something about it.