Grousing

Grouse (photo: Gary Kramer)

Grousing is often met with supposedly well-intentioned, even edifying corrections. You could be a citizen of a trouble spot like Ukraine or out of work like person x, y or z. Why not make a gratitude list comprised of all the good things, on the top of which would be the fact of simply being alive? However, it’s oddly dispiriting to constantly receive corrections of this kind since the one thing that can be said about your so-called “problems” is that they’re yours. They’re what make you what you are. It’s humiliating to be informed your malaise results from little more than not getting as much attention as you dream of (alas you never became a Hegelian figure of World Historical Importance). Yet what’s the motivation behind all these stalwarts with their testy morality? What right do they have to lord their almost puritanical finger-shaking over those who simply feel disappointed with their lot in life? Is the human condition such that there's a privileged class of sufferers who're allowed to cry out to the Gods while lesser mortals must walk away from their petty concerns, their tails between their legs? “I can’t complain,” is the response Mr. or Mrs. Clean gives when asked how they are. The truth is they can, all they want, even if they’re not Medea or Lear, Antigone or just some clown like Djokovic who can’t play the tour since he refuses to take a vaccine.

read "Is Your Self-Invention a Success?" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Rockin' Robin"by Bobby Day