Complaining After the Holocaust Museum

While I was in D.C. last week, I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I saw some things I had never seen before—really terrible, unspeakably disturbing footage, for example, from the medical experiments done on the victims—things that could only resonate sickly, dumbly, numbly in my mind as something too unreal, something too much like a horror movie. My mind yelled at myself as I even made the comparison to a horror movie: this horror was real.

Fast forward. I am leaving the museum. It is sunny out. Beautiful, really. I am by myself, and walking to the subway. My phone rings and I automatically pick up.

It’s a friend. He doesn’t live in New York, and so our friendship is mostly over the phone, and occasionally email. It’s not been a banner year for him: his relationship is on the rocks, he hates his job, and because he recently moved for said job, he also doesn’t know anyone in his town. He’s been down, and needing a lot of support.

It isn’t his fault that he called as I was leaving a Holocaust museum. Honestly, I should not have picked up.

But as I listen to him vent, I feel a wave of repulsion and contempt sweep through me. Doesn’t he realize how inane his complaints are? That in the scheme of things, he’s doing well? I want to throw it all back in his face. To tell him that he is fine, he is just fine, and to have a little perspective—please!

Later, stewing, I tell a second friend about this interaction, under the guise of social commentary: “How can we complain about anything?” I say. I will never complain again. I am snow-white in my self-righteousness. “Whatever, dude,” he replies, “We can’t walk around with a smile on our faces all the time just because we’re not in death camps.”

Ultimately, I agree with my friend. But, but, but. We complain about so many things. The food is too cold. The coffee is too hot. My socks are wet. My lips are chapped. Overworked, underpaid, out of shape, overweight… it goes on and on. How do we dare? How can we stand ourselves? I will complain again, I realize. This is human nature. This is how we cope. But I resolve to not complain again in public.

My friend sends me a link to excerpts from a list of “hateful things” written by Sei Shōnagon, a Japanese tenth-century author. The context may be different, and often hilarious, but her complaints are essentially quite contemporary:

One has gone to bed and is about to doze off when a mosquito appears, announcing himself in a reedy voice. One can actually feel the wind made by his wings, and, slight though it is, one finds it hateful in the extreme.

My resolve to stop complaining, at least publicly, holds up for a couple of days. And then I am on a bus back to New York. It should take four, maybe four and a half hours. It takes six. By the end of the ride, I am beside myself. I take it all back: I can’t figure out how to justify complaining about one meaningless bus ride with all the terrible things I saw at the Holocaust museum. But the complaining is jumping out of me. I have to do something.

I write myself an email:

Lincoln Tunnel at 7:15, still not off bus at 7:50—oh, how hateful!