The benefits of not complaining

All my best lines have already been taken.

In this case, the line that I would use comes from “A Streetcar Named Desire”, and Blanche DuBois utters it as a psychiatrist and nurse take her away to the sanatorium.  “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

As have I.  Again this morning, strangers rescued me from the muck and mud on a city street. This time I fell between two parked cars, coming out of court after an early morning docket.   I’d like to say that I slipped but I did not. I’d like to blame the illegally parked car behind mine, but that did not impede my passage in any way.  I just fell.

In fact, as I stepped between his front bumper and my rear bumper, I started to grumble about his parking illegally.  But I reminded myself about this blog and the need to be accountable to anyone still following — amusedly perhaps — my increasingly misnamed year without complaining.(1)  So I halted my castigation of the driver of the illegally parked car, moved forward, and pitched head-first onto the asphalt.

My gloves in the slush, my purse flown forward, my precious Rhodes College binder sitting in water — and goodness know where my keys went — there I lay, wondering what I would do next.  But I didn’t wonder long.  A pick-up stopped ahead of my position and a woman hopped out, at the same time as a crossing pedestrian diverted his path to angle towards me. Between the two of them, they lifted me upright, gathered my belongings, and brushed the wet snow from my coat.

My friends Jenny and Jessica constantly tell me that I will draw to me what I hope to have.  In this case, I got an immediate reward from pushing my complaint away:  the kindness of two strangers.

Nice when a plan comes together.

OCP-Streetcar

 

 

 

 

(1) This designation itself comes from Douglas Adams, who noted the burgeoning number of books in his “Increasingly misnamed trilogy”, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

 

4 thoughts on “The benefits of not complaining

  1. Theresa

    Great attitude, Corinne! I would have probably thought I was being punished for complaining. That may be the difference between glass-half-empty and glass-half-full thinking. I need to work on seeing the fullness of things! Thanks for sharing the insight!

    Reply
  2. Pat

    I’m finally catching up on ten days of the blog. That was a bit of a mix of good and bad karma, right? Bad for falling, and good for the assistance. 🙂

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *