“Do you complain a lot?” I remember being asked this question by a former spiritual director.  No, not me, I thought, in shock.  I’m not complaining, I’m just expressing my concerns.  At least that’s what I thought I was doing.

It hurt.  Here, I thought I was doing something good in pointing out everything that was wrong with the situation and wanted sympathy, a solution, or maybe just to vent.  But this person saw me as complaining.  I’m not a complainer.  My concerns are very important.  Well, even so, I’ve learned that there is a fine line between complaining and “expressing our concerns.”  All of us have blind spots and this is a common one.

When I look back on that situation, I still think that my concerns were valid, and I felt helpless to change anything.  I wanted this person, who had more authority than me, to be as outraged as I was. But, I did learn an important lesson in self-examination.  Now, before I share my “concerns,” I ask myself if this might rather be a complaint.  If it a complaint, and if there’s nothing I can do about it, or if I’m not willing to do anything about it, then maybe it would be better to just keep my mouth shut. Ouch, that hurts!