As  I drove down Johnson Drive, I encountered a roadblock. “Dang!” I said outloud, turning my car to the right.  And then – wham — kind of like the V8 commercial, I told myself, “Technically, girlfriend, that was complaining!”

Oh, mama mia!  Now I’m my own Enforcer.  Remember that show — The Equalizer — the spooky Brit in the trenchcoat who made things come out right for the hapless and the helpless?  Well, I guess I’ve taken over my own Equalizing, monitoring myself so that my karma doesn’t cross paths with my dogma.

Yikes!  Ohh well!  Nobody said this would be easy!!!!

I’m one of the millions of people who slogged through healthcare.gov to get Health Insurance through the Marketplace.   Whoa, baby. Was that a wild ride!  Eventually, a very nice lady on the telephone spent about an hour working with me — and then ended up putting me in the wrong plan!

Well, I gritted my teeth, hoisted up my big-girl britches, and got on the phone with a representative of Blue Cross, my chosen (forever) insurer.  Hours…days…weeks later, I have insurance:  Lower premium than my old policy, higher deductible but still at a substantial net annual savings, premium paid, and I get to keep my doctors/hospital.

I smiled through the receiver, thanked the nice folks at BCBS over and over, wrote to their managers, sent them thank-you notes via e-mail, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Not only do I have the insurance I want, under the ACA, through the Marketplace,  but I got through the whole thing without complaining!!!!

Ain’t life grand?

My former sister-in-law and friend, Linda Overton, responds to apology by saying, “I forgave ya when ya done it,” in her lovely drawl.  Her voice echoes in my mind when I encounter some slight or remission that raises my hackles.  I tell myself that I should overlook the failure, or forgive it.  And when I don’t, when I grouse or complain, I hear her voice again, mildly telling me that she has bestowed on me, the grace of her heart.

My quest not to complain takes me a step back from forgiveness.

As I trudged down the unshoveled walk today, I shook off the urge to wonder “why??”, outloud, and in the hearing of any of the three folks whom I simultaneously (no kidding — by group text) asked to shovel the walk.  I would say, in a mock quizzical way, “Tell me again why the walk isn’t shoveled?”  And then they would apologize, giving me the chance for that self-righteous gaze, the magnanimous posture, and the forgiveness.

Now, lest you mistake me:  Linda’s brand of forgiveness is sincere.  Someone errs; and she quietly, sometimes without comment, forgives them deep within herself.  But what I’ve described does not follow this path.  It is not sincere.  Forgiveness heals; insincere expression of forgivness provides the forgiver with a chance to create the perception of virtue.  “I, her royal highness, do hereby absolve you,” proclaims the wronged one, with a royal sweep of her arm.

What I strive to do is diminish the opportunity for drawing the apology and bestowing the gesture.  I want to react to the failure by simply going back to the person and telling them why I need them to do the chore, and requesting their compliance — but allowing them both to decline, and to do so without my wrath descending on their head.  This is what I’ve learned from Nonviolent communication:  Express your need, make a specific request for action to fulfill that need, but make it as a request, not a demand.

If the person errs — does something we do not want them to do or fails to do something we do not want them to do — complaining will not meet your need to have the conduct change.   So what useful purpose does it serve?  The pattern persists: Demand, complain, apology, forgiveness, and the demander gets to strut about feeling self-righteous, while the apologizer slinks off, feeling like a failure.

Wow.  What a way to live.

I  can hear my mother’s voice: “You know, you catch more flies with honey than fly paper.”  Never mind that nobody on earth uses fly paper anymore, right? But the principle is still true: Try a little kindness.

Was I challenged today!  A few mistakes discovered in something done by someone else, and I am pacing back and forth tempted to growl.  I walked into my office, sat down, and thought about fly paper.  I found my body, rigid as it had been with anger, starting to relax.  I let it go.

I even rewrote a snarky email today!  Going as it was to an opposing counsel that I find sniveling at best and outrageous at worst, still, I strove to rephrase it.  It sounded stilted, edited, and a bit phony.  Oh well. It’s only been 8 days!

As a total aside, I also found myself losing patience without someone who wanted to repeat the same story to me over and over.  I thought about the word “empathy” and realized that my voice held nothing like that; I sounded impatient.  Pressed for time, overworked, not expecting to have to even meet with this person let alone talk with them for close to 45 minutes,  I grew agitated and had to remind  myself that this person was an individual human being. I tried. I slowed down. I told the person just sit, tell me, talk.  But I know she had heard my frustration and the moment to show genuine empathy had passed.

*sigh*  So, a good day for not complaining; not so much for Nonviolent Communication!  Like quitting smoking and going on a diet the same week — challenging!!!!

So…there’s always tomorrow.

Today I’d like to say a few words about triggers.

The man who cuts you off in traffic.  The Judge who looks down on you and smirks as she denies your continuance request.  The spouse who bites your head off when you ask if he or she wants more coffee.  The boss who leaves early while you slave away at your PC.  The teenager who leaves his dirty dishes in the sink.

And when it happens, that trigger gets pulled, we all say, “Oh my Gawd, I could just —“.

Oops.

And some triggers are worse:  The arrogant man who treats you like you’re daft because you’re female.  The older person who makes a statement about an ethnic group that stuns you.  The client who doesn’t pay but still calls five times a day.  The trigger gets pulled, and we all say, “That son of a —“.

Double oops.

One  has a perfect right to say:  “Dear —  Sir — Your honor — I need …and I would like you to…” or “I am uncomfortable with…and I would appreciate it if you would not…”.  These statements are not complaints.  They are requests for a change in behavior to meet an end that you articulate.

To your spouse:  “I need to be calm in the morning while  preparing for work.  Would you be able to watch the kids during that half an hour?”

And when he says, “Gee, I’d like to, but I’m late”,  refrain from grumbling while you slam the Cheerios on the table and the kids sit, wide-eyed, listening to you talk about their Daddy’s unmitigated gall.  Complaining effects the speaker and anyone who hears it.  And the audience is rarely the object of the complaint, who has usually gone about their business oblivious to your ire.  There are a lot of collateral victims of complaining though — the next  guy you see, the next call you make, the kids, the poor kids, those wide-eyed little ones listening to you bash their mommy or daddy for whatever slight you just suffered.

Nobody makes you complain; you choose complaining.  And you can choose not to complain.  I had just such a chance today; and I bit my togue, and let it roll by me.  I found the experience challenging; but I made it through without complaining.  I’m still in shock!  A week ago, I would have snapped, berated, and raised my voice in self-righteous indignation.  Today, I looked at the person standing cross from me, poential collateral victim of the complaint which rose to my lips, and I said instead, “Well, it’s a new year.”  And let it go.

Everybody complains about the weather, don’t they?  “Dang, it’s cold!”  Does that really count as complaining?  Does the snow care if I grouse about it?

When I was a Kansas City, Missouri prosecuting attorney, a hundred years ago before electricity was invented, and well before Al Gore invented the Internet, I served in Courtroom D, under Judge Leonard Hughes Sr.

A fire-plug of a man with a gravelly laugh who called me “Madame City Attorney Hotlips” in private, and “H.L.” in public, Judge Hughes ruled from a bench over which he could barely see but did so with piercing eyes.  He understood humanity.  In those days, when confused gender-identity had not yet found its way to the psychology journals, Judge Hughes allowed male prostitutes who preferred to dress as women to do so in his courtroom. He called them “Ma’am” and used the feminine names they preferred.  Though he threw a little humor in the mix at all times, he treated everyone with respect, even the most nervous of traffic violators or the new cop on the block.

Judge Hughes opened every docket the same way. He hammered his gavel on the bench to silence anyone still muttering after Bailiff Bill Green announced that court was in session.  When he had our full attention, he proclaimed, in his strong, firm voice, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I woke up this morning, which is more than a lot of people can say.  So let’s get this show started.”

I cannot recall ever hearing Judge Hughes gripe, grumble or complain.  As long as he awakened each morning on the right side of the ground, he counted each day as a blessing.

The snow might not care whether I complain about it or not.  But Judge Hughes, retired, and later, gone to his Maker in a sad and terrible car accident on a snowy winter’s day, skidding into a pole or a tree on his way to court — well, Judge Hughes might, and so.  And so.  Everybody I saw today that mentioned the snow got this from me:  “Well, it could be worse. We could be in Minnesota.”

We’re snowed in the house today.  Well, not entirely.  One vehicle has front-wheel drive and is an SUV, and another has 4-wheel drive.  The comparatively light snow of KC won’t really dictate that the occupants of the Holmes house stay indoors, but it does mean one son has decided to return to Memphis tomorrow; and my husband’s oil-driling projects, which he usually visits on Sunday, have been temporarily stayed.  So…here we are, in the house, with my husband on day-2 of his weight loss diet worrying about the pump-jacks in Kansas; and my stepson retreating back to bed leaving all of his belongings on the dining room table.

A nice challenge for someone trying to live complaint-free.

The closest I came to a complaint yesterday was a mild rebuke to a companion whose silence seemed petulant.  “I’ll go on home if you would prefer that I not be here,” I offered, hearing an echo of negativity in my own voice.  Then I fell silent, thinking about my vow to live complaintless, and wondering if I shoudn’t try instead to figure out what this person’s silence meant.  Could it be worry?  Could  I have said something that triggered emotional pain?  Merely indigestion, perhaps?  I realized that I had made assumptions.  Perhaps correct, perhaps not.  But assumptions.  I should, instead, have inquired, “Are you feeling angry? Are you feeling sad?  Are you worried?”  It’s a harder but cleaner route.

My self-righteous stance might not have been “complaining”, but neither was it fair.  Ah, yes.

I’m learning!  Happy snow day, everyone!

Hammering away at the tablet, sitting at my dining room tabe, I wince and utter a noise. Not a word — just a grunt of disgust.  In the living room, my son looks up from his computer.  “What’s wrong?” He asks, and I realize that I have almost done it — I’ve almost uttered a complaint, day four, not even a week into my quest to go a year without complaining.

“Nothing is wrong,” I assure him. “I’m trying to learn WordPress and it seems to be set so as not to be mobile-compatible.  I just have to find the setting, I’m sure.”

A small exchange, but one which reminds me that the act of complaining permeates conduct, words, actions, even noises.  That little glance around the room — that can be a complaint. I started this journey acknowledging that this is so, and here is a reminder for me, on day four.

And my reply rings true. Nothing is really wrong.  Even if I haven’t learned to use WordPress in a way which enables me to do so from my tablet, and even if I never do, nothing is really wrong.

Fresh from listening to three hours of Marshall Rosenberg (the red-shirt series, on Youtube, posted in nine-minute increments by user who has met my need for a manageable viewing), I have a keen awareness that “wrong” exists only in my mind, in the sense of if there is a “wrong” there is a “right”.  It is not wrong that WordPress as I’ve set its parameters is not preently configured to be mobile- compatible; it just “is”.  I might have a need, Rosenberg would say, that hasn’t been met.  My need is to be able to use WordPress on my tablet as it is my mobile computing device.  But it isn’t “wrong”; it just “is” that way.  I can be upset about it, or I can drill around dashboard and figure out how to change the settings.  If I can’t determine how to change the settings, I can learn to work around the cumbersomeness.

In one of my two favorite movies, “When A Man Loves A Woman”, one of the main characters says to the other, “this adult stuff is really fun, isn’t it?”.  In the same spirit, I say to myself, as my son settles back onto the couch, that learning to live without complaining is “reallly fun”, a phrase here used to mean “challenging”.

Day 4:  Still complaint-free!

A doctor’s scheduler ALMOST got me to complain today.

She snapped she was from “your doctor’s office” (lady, I’ve got a half dozen doctors) and “we’ve been trying to reach you since November, you are overdue for your three-month check-up.”

Now, I’ve talked to the doctor for whom she works in the last six weeks.  A medication he gave me caused a problem. Well, “problem” is an understatement. I collapsed during a trial. My client had to take me to the nearest hospital with a cardiac unit. I spent the night in that hospital.  A different cardiology group changed my medication. This gal’s boss called the following week. He approved the new medication, and said, “Call me or [his surgeon partner] when you want to talk about whether you want to continue on the medication or have surgery.”

So….I asked the caller, “When was the plan made to schedule me back in three months?” September, came the barked reply.  I told her I had talked with the doc since then, and there was a different game plan.  Well you are overdue for your three-month check-up and we’ve been trying to reach you since November. Hmmmm.  I tried again, relating that the doctor and I had talked, and he and I had evolved a different game plan.  So you don’t want to schedule your 3-month check-up? she snapped back.

I took a deep breath. “Did you hear what I said?” I asked her, as calmly as my 3-day-old new self could manage.  Yes, You said…. And she gave me a completely incorrect account of what I had tried to tell her, then raised her voice and said: Do you want schedule your 3-month check-up now or NOT?  Uh, that would be “no”.

She hung up before the “o” followed the “n”.

I tried calling her back. I got voice mail.

*sigh*

Now, mind you, I’m not complaining, but I think this gal is part of the reason so many people do!  Lesson I learned from all this?  Don’t be somebody else’s “this gal”; don’t give someone else a reason to think that complaining will solve the problem!!!!!