Day after day after day after day, complaining about the same person or people doing the same things. NEVER doing anything to address the situation.
One day on the phone, she was extremely angry about something at work. Finally, I made some lighthearted remark. Which REALLY set her off.
Why was I making jokes? The situation was SERIOUS!!!! DAMNIT!!!!
I told her I was just trying to lighten the mood and trying to make her laugh a little.
Her response was "I WANT TO BE ANGRY"
My response was "Well I don't."
"If you're in a bad mood and want help getting out of it, call me."
If you're in a bad mad AND WANT to stay there, call someone else".
Then hung up.
I think we went out once or twice afterwards. But the complaining attitude never changed and I decided I wasn't putting up with that crap any longer.
Saw a poster on a teachers door one time. It said:
"Everybody brings joy into a room. Some when they enter. Others when they leave."
Happiness is a decision. One that needs to be made everyday.
Life is hard enough, without needlessly adding angry people into it.
(see my tagline)
Yoda said it's fear, but I think anger is the path to the dark side.
Open that door and step through it and things change. One becomes someone/something different. Worst case examples in my world have been the Jekyll to Hyde alcoholic drunks.
And, judging by the media and how they report and to whom, the anger seems to be getting worse, too, which is understandable.
Everywhere I look in our given over, "up is down, wrong is right", crazy, mixed up world, I see how building one's personal ideology around anything other than the highest Truth as one's standard is guaranteed to cause a lot of pain and anger.
Like you said, life is hard enough already.
The Care and Feeding of a Habit
A workman on a construction site went through the same routine every day at noon: He’d open his lunch box, peer inside, then curse and complain: “Peanut butter and jelly again! I hate peanut butter and jelly!”
This went on for weeks, until one day one of his co-workers suggested that if he hated peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so much, he should tell his wife.
“What wife?” he bellowed. “I’m not married. I fix my own lunch!”
The same thing is true, in one way or another, for all of us: Most of what we like least about our lives is of our own making.
If you’re sick and tired of something that’s happening in your life, look around and see, exactly, who is doing it to you.
Then remember that you do have a choice: You can keep eating peanut butter and jelly, or you can try something new. It’s up to you.
But don’t get hooked on baloney, either!
From:
http://www.doitnow.org/pages/224/parables/06.html