April 2, 2008
To Lead a More Fulfilling Life
…Start Whining

Curing the world of complaining one wristband at a time.  Why?  A story on “Sunday Morning”, the CBS offering, aired a couple of weeks back, detailing how a Kansas City minister has devised a unique method to cure society of complaining.  Please note that while the feature aired in early March, I didn’t see the story until last week.  We TIVO “Sunday Morning” for two reasons, one to play it back at a more convenient time, but more importantly watching the recorded show allows one to skip past the, conservatively speaking, 9,728 commercials contained in the program.   

But back to the plan to eliminate complaining from American life.  Will Bowen, a Kansas City area parson, suggests Americans sport a purple wristband, and buy his book, to eliminate negative verbiage from their daily conversation.  Obviously, the Kansas City cleric is winning conversational converts as his parishioners at Christ Church Unity have mailed out almost five million wristbands.  Far be it from me to find fault with this unique self-help program designed to wipe away the epidemic of whining, kvetching, grumping and bellyaching infecting our world, but this is a terrible idea.  

To eliminate moaning and groaning would be more crippling to newspaper columnists than the absence of spell check from their computers. To banish dis-satisfaction with the status quo would soon result in Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olberman and their TV ilk being replaced by the more controversial Home Shopping Network.  Should Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken be convinced to change their ways and discuss only the positives in life, their place on the AM dial will soon be occupied by music for a kinder, gentler America where no lyric aired could be more discordant than the Captain and Tennille singing “Muskrat Love”.  

One shudders to imagine the havoc “You Said It” would experience should the postings in the Daily Sentinel Saturday and Sunday offering be limited to happy, happy, happy.  The feature would soon be reduced to one paragraph a week, the regularly appearing thank you to some unknown soul for turning in a lost cell phone, purse, billfold or 7 year old to the courtesy clerk at Wal-Mart. 

The right Reverend Bowers “no complaint” plan is for participants to wear a purple wristband and shift that band from right wrist to left, or versa-vicea, whenever a complaint is uttered.  The goal is to go 21 days, the time span the vicar claims is required to break a habit, without having moved the purple band.  Three weeks without complaining?  Impossible.  Were I to adopt this wrist switch strategy for every negative verbal outburst, within 72 hours you’d find me at the ER asking for relief from the excruciating pain of a repetitive stress wrist injury. 

Does anyone want to go to morning coffee with a geezer group refusing to complain?  Do I want to hear, “McCain, Obama or Hillary, it’s so hard to choose because they’re all perfect.”?  Or, “We’re so lucky to have President Bush as our leader?”  Who wants to lunch with a friend intoning, “I just don’t know whom to pick as my favorite team the Raiders, the Yankees or Al Qaeda.”