Don’t make your problem my problem – Mixed Masala

There are many quotes that stick with a person after you hear it for the first time.

Some of these quotes are from famous people, who had the gift of the gab. Some quotes though, are from people you know and it’s these quotes that stick with you most. These quotes are personal and deeper, and can’t be found on Google or in a book.

One of these quotes is ‘Don’t make your problem my problem’ and was always recited by a geography teacher, who used it when his learners came up with excuses as to why they hadn’t done their work. One the face of it, the quote may seem like a silly, funny thing to say. But once you analyse it, you realise just how profound it was.

Too often in life, we get bogged down with toil and turmoil and more often than not, that stress is not of our own doing. We stress about situations out of our control or dwell on things other people say or do. We get so engrossed in other people’s problems that we forget to live our own lives in the process. It tends to happen that we don’t want to get involved in people’s problems, but they somehow make it our problem anyway.

The reason for that is: people love to complain – they can’t help it. They need to complain about their lives, their jobs, their families and everything that happens in their day. If they can’t find something to complain about, they will complain about someone else’s job, family or life.

Ford Prefect (a character in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) noted this about the human race: “His first theory was that if human beings didn’t keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this – if human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”

With the emergence of social media, people don’t even need to talk to complain or create problems; they can sit in the comforts of their own homes and still know what’s going on around them. Hence the ‘Don’t make your problem my problem’ quote is so important.

We shouldn’t allow others to create drama and stress in our lives and we shouldn’t have to entertain complaints. At the end of the day, we have our own lives to live and those serial complainers won’t be there when you need someone.

So the next time you see a serial complainer come your way, just tell them not to make their problem your problem, and hopefully they’ll use the added free time to do something more productive with their lives.

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