Complaining

This blog was put on the side burner for quite some time as I switched over to Amysan.wordpress.com to document my short term missions trip to Japan. Go there if you'd like to read more about my adventures there.

I'd like to blog something though that I observed while in Japan. While travelling in Japan, I noticed that people complain... a lot. I think in particular, i noticed that north americans complain a lot - myself included, don't get me wrong, i'm not making comments about my team members right now. But i noticed that while there, we complained about a lot of things. Granted, we were in a foreign place, and there were a lot of things we were not used to, but still, we were there voluntarily on a short term missions. It's expected that we will be uncomfortable and encounter new and unexpected things we don't like. Does this give us permission to complain about it? All the time? About everything? We complained about the hot weather, the humidity, the crowds at the train station, the crowds inside the train, no trash bins to throw out our trash, no water to drink, fatigue, no personal space, smoke in public places, no English-speakers, etc. The list was endless. Yet i feel that it should have been worse. It was 9 people in a small Japanese condo - maybe 800 sq ft. We had one toilet and one shower room to share and that was it. I feel that there should have been even more complaining, more arguments, more chaos. And yet there wasn't. I attribute this to the work of God in all the team members. Because we were on a missions trip, we put up with more, our patience and tolerance went up, we let things go, we picked up after ourselves, we made an effort to get along. It makes me wonder, now that i'm back in Seattle, if we were holding back while in Japan and extending extra grace, what would happen when we return to our normal every day comfortable lives? Would this mean that we dont' hold back on our complaining? That instead of just complaining about certain things that REALLY push us to our limits, that we complain instead of everything that remotely nudges us the wrong way? Or that maybe doesn't meet our level of expectations? Maybe that's another discussion - our levels of expectation - do we expect too much? Are we a bunch of snobs??

COming back from Japan, I can see immediately the things I take for granted... clean smoke-free air in a restaurant, a large apartment that i share with only one person, my own bathroom - shower, toilet AND sink!!! - my own walk in closet, a car with it's own carport, a well-paying job, job security (to an extent), fresh clean clothes on my back, food always available. I dont' have to worry about much when I'm at home. But people live with much less. And I should stop complaining so much about little things that many people don't even have the luxury to enjoy.