Enduring but not endearing
Grumpiness is the first turn on the road to being an arsehole, writes Mark Barnes
Ihad reason to find myself in traffic last Monday, on the M1 heading to Midrand, in that foul weather that seems to be making a habit of itself lately. We just don’t do lasting drizzle in Joburg. We do lekker highveld thunderstorms that start at five o’clock, sun out at 6.30 — that’s the deal we signed up for — best climate in the world. This endless dark cloud stuff is for Capetonians; they love bad weather.
You could hardly see 100m ahead of you through the spray, in the dark blanket of wet misery that engulfed us. You had to focus. Every now and again someone would put on their hazard lights and we’d all get properly socially distanced, fearing the worst. Those bad-weather highway pile-ups are hectic.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. That kind of weather is only good for staying in bed with a good book, or with someone who has recently read one. In any case, it’s just weather, it’ll pass, and there’s nothing we can do about it, so shut up! For sure, there’s somebody worse off than you are. A friend sent me a WhatsApp to say they’d had really good rains and the potholes were 80% full.
My real problem was that the lousy weather just made things worse. I’d started off the day grumpy. Did I mention that I’d hurt my toes, or that we’re expecting loadshedding in 53 minutes, as I write this?
There is much to be grumpy about, particularly if you put your mind to it. Be careful not to make a habit of it. I’m convinced there’s a diagnosable condition (that I’m increasingly afflicted by) that can best be described as early onset grumpiness. This condition, it seems, most frequently presents in middle-aged men. If not treated in its formative stages, early onset grumpiness can become an enduring personality trait. This will not help you make friends and influence people.
There’s actually a tipping point at which grumpiness starts to overwhelm. At some stage in your social and career development, your talents and prospects and general character are noticed by those around you.
If you’re on the up and up, clearly heading for a prosperous life, you may find that peoples’ opinions of you are ahead of your own. “He has a great future ahead of him,” you may hear others say of you. Happiness.
As your growth trajectory towards riches and fame tapers off, or even fades, there may come a point where your opinion of yourself is now ahead of those around you. In this phase of the disease, you could catch yourself saying things like: “Don’t you know who I am?!” to people who couldn’t care less. Said even once is once too often.
You’ll know you’ve finally lost it when you respond to questions about who you are with answers about who you were. When you simply can’t resist telling people that you used to be the boss of this or that, or you finished a marathon in such and such a time, or that you have some or other academic qualification, or that you went to Harvard.
An introduction to your future (or your present, for that matter) is seldom well served by a glowing summary of your past. Get a life.
Grumpiness and its close cousin whingeing are less welcome in good company than you think, no matter how tolerant the audience pretend to be. Nobody wants to keep company with Mr Grumpy Pants. Maybe you can do without company (who cares what they think of you anyway, right?) and you have enough tolerant friends, but there’s one person you cannot escape from, and that’s yourself.
What a pain it must be to live with a perpetual whinger. The worst part about listening to yourself complain all the time is that it’s difficult to get any sympathy. You’re the source of the problem. Think about that.
You won’t ever get happy yearning for your past, or even comparing what you have or can do now to what you had or could do then. The measures of success and influence and, ultimately, happiness (or even contentment) change as we grow up, as they rightly should. As we get older, our wealth
(of personality) is measured by what we can give back, so much more than by how much we can take out. Embrace that.
More patience than urgency, more teaching than tolerance, more laughter than anger, more encouragement than guidance. These are the elements of peace not afforded grumpy old know-it-all men. Put more effort into being interested than you may care about being interesting.
Once all is said and done, though, the real reason not to be grumpy is that it simply doesn’t work. It gives no pleasure and achieves nothing. Leave it behind you. Seek an outlook which can realise the upside of the circumstances. Keep your troubles in perspective. Listen more than you speak. Don’t be an arsehole.
I’m going to give it a try.