The Complaint Journal

Someone has redesigned a road junction. Ridiculous.

A café has stopped taking cash. The country's going downhill.

A train is three minutes late. Typical.

A council announces a new initiative. Waste of taxpayers' money.

Spend five minutes scrolling through the comments beneath almost any news story and you'll discover that Britain has quietly become a nation of professional complainers.

Take Andy Burnham. Whether you agree with every proposal he champions is almost beside the point. Announce a new transport scheme, plans to build more affordable homes, further devolution, or another attempt to tackle long-standing problems, and within minutes the response is often the same. It'll never work. Waste of money. He's only doing it for publicity. Before an idea has had any opportunity to succeed—or fail—the verdict has already been delivered.

Healthy democracies need criticism. They don't need cynicism.

Give the guy a break.

Trying things is hard. Governing a city is hard. Improving anything is hard.

Complaining, by contrast, is astonishingly easy.

I've tried keeping a gratitude journal several times.

For a few days I faithfully wrote entries like: "Good coffee." "A sunny morning." "Family." "A kind conversation."

Then life became busy, the notebook disappeared into a drawer, and my grand experiment quietly fizzled out.

Recently I wondered whether I'd been keeping the wrong sort of journal.

So I started a complaint journal.

Not because I wanted to become more negative.

Quite the opposite.

Every time I catch myself grumbling—whether aloud or only in my head—I write it down.

"The supermarket has moved the biscuits again." "Why is this queue taking so long?" "Someone's parked too close to my car." "Why is everyone walking so slowly?"

Read back over a week's worth of entries and something remarkable happens.

You don't become angrier.

You start laughing.

Because most of the complaints aren't really about injustice.

They're about inconvenience.

They're tiny frustrations dressed up as moral causes.

Seeing them written down exposes how quickly my mind reaches for irritation when what the situation really requires is perspective.

Driving is particularly revealing.

Someone hesitates at a roundabout and I immediately conclude they are incompetent.

Someone forgets to indicate and I wonder how they ever passed their driving test.

Someone pulls out a little too late and I quietly prepare a speech about the collapse of modern standards.

Yet when I hesitate? Visibility wasn't great.

When I forget to indicate? I was concentrating.

When I make a mistake? I had a perfectly understandable reason.

It's remarkable how generously I interpret my own behaviour while assuming the worst of complete strangers.

If only I extended to other drivers the same compassion I instinctively expect them to extend to me.

We do something similar in football.

A few weeks ago, England were praising Thomas Tuchel for taking the national side deep into the World Cup. After defeat, many of the very same voices were questioning whether he should ever have been appointed. Of course managers should be scrutinised. But the speed with which admiration becomes condemnation says something about us as much as it says anything about Tuchel.

We have become remarkably quick to complain and surprisingly slow to appreciate.

The complaint journal isn't really about complaining.

It's about catching yourself in the act.

It's difficult to remain self-righteous when your notebook contains an indignant paragraph about somebody taking the last pain au chocolat.

Humour has always been one of the great correctives to pride.

Not humour directed at other people.

Humour directed at ourselves.

People who can laugh at themselves rarely become permanently bitter.

They recognise that they too are capable of pettiness, impatience and overreaction.

Perhaps compassion doesn't begin by trying harder to love difficult people.

Perhaps it begins by recognising that, on many days, we are the difficult people.