I don’t usually complain, but there are times where it may be needed. This seems to be one of those times.
As paradoxical as it may seem, my complaint has everything to do with complaining.
Depending on where you are on campus, there is always a great variety of complaints circulating. At work, the pay is always too low, our hours are always too few and the work conditions are always poor. In class, the teachers are never understanding enough or lenient enough when it comes to assigning class work. In Saga, the food is less than what we pay for. In life, gas prices are always too high and jobs are always too hard to come by.
Now some of these complaints may be valid to a certain extent, but several seem to be the creation of an overriding dissatisfaction in our lives.
An excellent case and point would be that of the new Saga dining hall. As someone who ate in the old facility, I know how impressed I was the first day I ate in the new building.
It is true that some days are better than others, but this is the case with everything and everyone in our lives. I must say that I am ashamed at what I hear people say about the new facility. I have heard people throw out words like “disgusting” and “sickening”.
I know people who won’t eat there because they say they will get sick. Now I may understand if there are complaints related to the types of meal plans or their overall price, but I don’t understand the complaints about food quality. Saga has a huge variety of food choices. Everything that ends up on someone’s plate is something that they have personally selected.
I know that I have eaten better in college than at any point in my life. I must say that Saga’s food selection are borderline exorbitant. I don’t know any other place in the world where it is a common experience to have handmade stir fry, a garden salad and brick-fired pizza all in the same meal. This says nothing of variety of drink options that could go with this meal. This transition to the New Sage facility has shown me that mostly likely our complaint isn’t really about the food, the facility or the situation. It is about us.
Are we grateful? This is the true question in our complaints.
Our society trains us to live in a state of continual dissatisfaction. If a new model of our current phone comes out, our old phone is no longer satisfying. It is only functional. We choose to be dissatisfied until we can upgrade.
In college, we often act as if our university is only acceptable at best. If the university does something right, many carry an attitude that says, “It’s about time.”
When we give out more complaints than compliments, it may be a good time to ask ourselves, “What will make me happy?” If our contentment is a complex tower of favorable circumstances that are rarely met, we have set ourselves up to be continually dissatisfied. Truly, if this is the case, nothing the university does will be able to fix our situation.
Happiness is a perspective. Joy is not a circumstance and contentment is not linked to the amount of our possessions. Life is what we make it to be. As for me, I want to make Troy into a time I look back at and say, “Wow, I was blessed to be there for those years.”
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