Complaints

It’s hot and humid, but repeat after me: I will not complain after the crappy summer we had last year!


Complaining is human nature, I guess. Last summer was too cold and too wet. The winter before was too snowy and cold. There’s not enough rain. There’s too much rain. It’s too sunny. It’s not sunny enough.

There has to be a balance point doesn’t there?

The complaints last week were all about the G8/G20 summits and the way Toronto was shut down. Not about the topics of discussion by the world leaders, of course, but more about the way our lives were disrupted. The Blue Jays game with the return of Roy Halladay was moved to Philadelphia, for crying out loud! This vibrant city becomes a ghost town on a summer weekend. Traffic disruption as motorcades roared up and down from cottage country carrying various and sundry world leaders. Very little water cooler talk though about AIDS, poverty in developing nations, infant mortality, nuclear development in North Korea and Iran, Sudan…well I could go on, but you get the picture.

Maybe it’s just that we can’t grasp the immensity of the problem; traffic we can understand and cope with, international aid and development we can’t. Maybe it’s because we feel powerless in the face of huge problems.

And so we complain about our weather issues or traffic issues or whether the Leafs should have given up those draft picks for Kessell.

Life is easier that way.