Recently, I decided to do a thought experiment. I made an attempt to go through each day without complaining and also not allowing myself to either become angry or react to another person’s anger. 

This is much tougher than it seems. The usual internal default mode for most humans is to find something annoying and then complain about it, ostensibly to relieve one’s internal stress about the issue and to spur on some kind of action. What I’ve found is that on a very basic level, complaining is simply a way for one to defer responsibility to another person or situation and essentially cry out for someone else to do something about said issue. The term “complaint” is nuanced and I’m not referring to important complaints about larger social issues (#metoo movement, climate change, et al) but rather the smaller complaints we launch out into the world from a position of feeling imposed on. I find that once complaints are vocalized some stress is released but in reality, at least for me, the concerning issue bounces around in my head and often gains steam. The negativity then becomes a flywheel that fans the embers of discontent and then anger arises.