Giving Up Griping

After the column I wrote two weeks ago, about giving up things for Lent, friend Bob Scott sent me a column that Rita Smith had written for the Globe and Mail's Facts and Arguments page.

Rita also remembered giving up things for Lent. Her family took it very seriously. Until the day a boyfriend came home for supper. "And what are you giving up for Lent?" her family asked him.

"Getting hit by buses," he replied without hesitation, "and getting eaten by sharks. There will be none of that this year, I tell you," he added for emphasis. "None!"

That irreverent response changed Rita's attitude. She started giving up other kinds of things.

"A few years ago," she wrote, "I gave up grumbling, griping, and whining of any kind. I made the public commitment on Ash Wednesday, and proceeded to spend the next six weeks studiously resisting the urge to join negative conversations and whining sessions.

"Over those weeks I was involved in a number of very complicated, contentious, stressful meetings. All progress ground to a halt as meetings disintegrated into whining sessions.

"'I'm very sorry,' I was forced to apologize on several occasions. 'I gave up grumbling, griping, and whining of any kind for Lent. I'd love to join you in this conversation, but I'm afraid it's against my religion.'"

Without exception, she reported, meetings quickly got back to productive business: "Who could go on griping and whining when it violated someone's sacrosanct religious belief?"

As Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist priest, wrote in his book The Heart of Buddha's Teaching, "We are what we perceive."

In other words, if we wear rose-colored glasses, that is our reality. If we expect a dog-eat-dog competition, that too is our reality.

Some reality is external, of course. No amount of positive thinking can make an earthquake or a mudslide disappear. But the significance of most life situations comes not from outside but from inside. To change my reality, Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, I must first change my perception of it.

Many hold their present reality so tightly they dare not let it go. They're afraid if they let go of their present practices, there may be nothing to take its place. They remain locked into negativity because that is all they feel they have.

An unknown correspondent once told me: "I am a work in progress."

Lent could be just a beginning. Rita Smith wrote: "I not only now give up grumbling, griping and whining of any kind every Lent, but I frequently re-state my commitment at the start of every big initiative. I put a 'loonie jar' on the table and ask staff to hold me accountable by making me put a dollar in the jar every time I engage in any negative talk or whining."

So do something constructive for Lent. Join Rita Smith. Give up something that will make a difference to everyone around you.