What Changes?

“You cry, 'I’m suffering severe pain!' Are you then relieved from feeling it, if you bear it in an unmanly way?”—Seneca. Moral Letters, 78.17

Physical training (aka "self inflicted pain") opens the door to emotional training--but who cares? Those who consistently seek to better themselves feel some kind of pain and look perhaps quite unglamorous while training, but who cares? We bring pain on ourselves. But who cares? Why complain?

What good comes from complaining? There's no relief in complaining. 

What changes when we complain? We can whine, cry, yell, scream, holler, break things, be cruel or short with someone--but what changes? We get make ourselves a mess, get hoarse, give ourselves (or someone else) a headache, have to clean up a mess, fix or replace whatever got broke, feel horrible for what we've done, humble ourselves, make apologies . . . beyond that, not much else changes. 

Silence is not easy but in silence one not only finds but shares strength. Suffering in silence may actually build someone up. One feature that makes a hero or role model attractive is that we watch them do hard things and not complain about it. They do hard things BECAUSE they are hard. 

Nobody likes to suffer, but what good is accomplished by spreading the news? Besides, someone could be experiencing something much worse than you and all your complaints merely give them something to laugh at.